Sacred Connections: Perspective
Another revelation, and then I promise no more words about my recent cataract surgeries. About ten days ago I had the surgery on my other eye, and a couple of days later I was at the pet store I usually frequent to purchase food for my dog, Sweet...
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Sacred Connections: Transitions
Many of us do not look forward to change or transitions. We may take comfort in the familiar and have some concern about what might be new or different. I like to think of myself as flexible, ready to try new things, and t...
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Sacred Connections: Seeing
Sometimes when it feels as if our lives are a bit under a cloud, the world can actually appear almost gray. I recall many years ago after the sudden death of a loved one, it was as if color had gone out of the world, everything had a pallor, a li...
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Sacred Connections: Uncertainty
I think many of us may be wrestling with uncertainty these days and longing for some certainty of our choosing. Many may recall the words of Benjamin Franklin, “… nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.” That’s probably ...
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Sacred Connections: We Need Each Other
As my nine-year-old granddaughter, Elia, and I were visiting on FaceTime earlier this week, I heard myself actually saying aloud, “If only SweetP (my dachshund/lab mix dog) could drive.” Was it really the grandma and not the grandchild who sa...
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Sacred Connections: Water
The other night I noticed I had missed a call a few minutes earlier from my son in Utah, so I quickly tried to call him back. When he answered I could hear the distinct sound of water nearby. I asked if I were catching him at a bad time, and he s...
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Sacred Connections: Language
Sometimes we don't know the language we’re looking for until it catches us by surprise. I was speaking with a family member last night, and she was lamenting the language of text messages. It is not a familiar language to her, and she was havin...
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Sacred Connections: Puzzling
With all of the tumult in our world today, I find myself taking moments of refuge in jigsaw puzzles. I’ve always loved jigsaw puzzles. There’s a beauty to them, and a challenge. Some of us have strategies as to how we begin, perhaps starting ...
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Sacred Connections: The Long View
Last evening, I was speaking with a dear friend who lives across the country; we were talking of the different circumstances in the states where we live, and the interior states of our own beings. The corona virus and the confrontations with inju...
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Sacred Connections: "Yes!"
"Yes!" In the midst of all the significant issues swirling around us, we can find ourselves caught up with concerns seemingly beyond our ability to respond. Feelings of powerlessness only add to that weight – and if you’re like me, also the ...
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Sacred Connections: How Do We Love Each Other?
How do we love each other? Jesus commands us to do this. He offers some guidance about forgiveness, about justice, about not-judging and responding to those in need. There are so many lessons to draw from, and yet sometimes the “how?” seems b...
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Sacred Connections: Regrouping
Regrouping seems to be an on-going need right now. And I find myself really struck by the word itself these days. I've always thought of regrouping in a more individual sense - like, " Okay, that didn't go quite as I’d hoped, time to regroup, t...
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Sacred Connections: Beyond Limitations
"Are you okay?"
"How's your health?"
"Do you have everything you need?"
These are opening words in a letter from my stepdaughter, Grace. I found the highly stamped and postmarked envelope in my mail yesterday morning. It had been sent di...
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Sacred Connections: Fragile
In a recent email exchange, Nancy Schwartz and I were trying to figure out how to best address pastoral concerns in the context of technical and logistical realities. At one point she wisely wrote me, "We are all so much more fragile right now th...
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Sacred Connections: Noticing
During this time of sheltering in place we are more than ever confronted with our relationships with ourselves, with those we shelter with, with those we love and unable to be with right now, and with all those friends, neighbors, strangers we en...
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Sacred Connections: The Person You Must Love
Find yourself and allow yourself to love what you find. ( The Rector's Blog: Turning Toward Love )
I loved those words from the end of Phil’s blog of a couple days ago. They were words I needed to hear. This has been and continues to b...
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Sacred Connections: Sharing Easter
Sometimes a purple pansy is more than a colorful spring plant. Our Gospel on Easter Sunday included the beautiful story of Mary standing weeping outside Jesus’ tomb and how she turns and sees Jesus standing there, but she does not know him. Th...
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Sacred Connections: Connected Still
We see each other in on-line worship services or in Zoom gatherings. The Church of the Redeemer staff meets regularly in Microsoft Teams. We have chance encounters at the grocery, the post office, a parking lot – faces and voices just recogniza...
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Sacred Connections: Who is My Neighbor?
Some of us may be experiencing that question arising in real time as we encounter people in our neighborhoods whom we simply haven’t seen before. I know most of the dog-walkers in my neighborhood, and not so many in the non-dog households unles...
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