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The other day our nine year old came home from school with a coin collection box for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. “Do you have any coins, Mommy?” she asked, and I sent her upstairs to raid the plastic jug on our dresser. The cardboard bank is now sitting on our kitchen table. What’s not on our table?

Lent was a fairly new concept for me when I was in college, and one year I decided to make the ultimate sacrifice—chocolate. I still remember standing in the ice cream parlor, looking at the luscious rocky road and chocolate swirl and brownie chunk ice cream–and choosing butter pecan. Butter pecan. Such is the suffering I was willing to endure for Jesus. I think now that the whole endeavor was a bit melodramatic.

Language matters. Particularly, the language we use in worship matters. So, my ears perked up recently when in worship congregation members were besieged by many, oh so many, opportunities to “volunteer.”

A friend of mine lamented that his girlfriend did not know who Emmett Till was when it came up in conversation. Something about TMZ and Lil Wayne. I have no clue. He told me he could barely pick his face up off the floor—much less his jaw—when he tried to explain that the story of this black boy is a huge part of American history, and how could you not know him??? But. Would people say that about Vincent Chin?

My daughter is a senior in high school. Now that she’s officially got herself into college (Vassar) and she, her father, her brother, and I know that she’ll be going away, we’ve begun the parade of lasts—her last home high school swim meet, her last YMCA state swim meet, her last “biggest/shortest” concert (a concert that involves all of the strings students in the Waterville school system), etc. The rest of the school year leading up to graduation will be full of lasts, some more significant than others.

I am a big fan of the liturgical calendar. As someone who plans worship, knowing what season it is helps. It helps us with the colors, the themes, the hymns, the scripture, the tone of worship. That being said, I must also admit that the liturgical season is an entirely human construct. We invented it to help us know God. God did not invent it to help God know us.

In the Celtic spiritual tradition, people refer to “thin places”—spaces where the veil between the Divine and the earthly is especially thin; places where you can easily have a sense of the holy, a feeling of connection to God. There are places commonly recognized as thin, as holy.

I have used a lot of different devotional books in my day, with varying degrees of success. I remember being enamored, long ago when I was in college and sort of a Jesus-fanatic, of a classic called God Calling, which I read more-or-less faithfully for a while. God Calling was supposed to be the voice of God coming directly to me— and all of the other people who bought the book as well. I also vaguely remember a book called Come Away, My Beloved. The title makes alone time with God seem sort of, well, seductive, in a way. I don't remember if the contents of the book delivered on that promise.Then there was the task of finding a daily Bible reading. 

Vinyl. It’s not just for hipsters any more. And Christians ought to listen up, because the future of the church might just be reflected in the resurgence of vinyl records.

Jesus didn’t speak the pleasant, sit-at-the-library-table verb study me. Instead Jesus said, “follow me.”

This month, we at Old South, the congregation I serve, are celebrating the 225th anniversary of the gathering of Congregationalists in Hallowell, Maine. As we contend with another very snowy Maine winter, and the piles of snow that have just about completely covered the primary entry door of our sanctuary building (when we are able to have worship this winter, we are meeting in the parish house across the street), it’s almost overwhelming to think about the difficulties of starting a church in the midst of winter in Maine.  At a recent Sunday worship service, someone quipped, “If there’s one time of year when you really need God, this is it.”

I have never had the privilege of a faith community catered to my cultural background. Although born to a Taiwanese family, I was exposed to a Western education (at age 10); far too young to relate to local Taiwanese children. And yet with my dark hair and yellow skin, love for barbecued squid on a stick, and fluency in two Chinese languages, I was certainly a foreigner to American ways.