I live in an area of our country that has a lot of “Keep Christ in Christmas,” signs. I think people post these signs for all sorts of reasons: for fear that Christmas has become too secular and lost its focus on the birth of the Christ Child; out of resistance to Christmas becoming...
This Advent has been a both-and experience for me this year. There have been some incredibly joyful moments: watching my daughter’s excitement about picking a Christmas tree, reading devotionals from our Advent calendar and enjoying my daughter’s insightful comments, and...
To see me now, you might not guess the initial reluctance I experienced with using a cell phone. My progress was slow from owning one at all, to learning to text, to using a smart phone, to now using my agile phone. Part of my reluctance was what such usage would mean – being able to be...
My oldest daughter is precocious. She is 5 and she comes from a long line of very head-strong women – at least three generations, but I never really knew the women in the generations above that. So with two ladies in the house who have strong opinions and strong wills, you can imagine...
Maybe it is because today is my birthday or maybe it is because we just lost a dear family member to cancer, but life and death have been on my mind a lot lately. The funny thing about being a priest is that those two things are almost always held in tension. In the course of one week, I can...
This past Sunday, St. Margaret’s kicked off its Stewardship Campaign, “Walking the Way.” As part of the campaign, we have distributed information packets that include a pledge card. You will be seeing guest blog posts from our parishioners here on this blog. There...
When I was ordained as a priest, the bishop anointed my hands. The bishop explained to me that my hands would be used by God for the work of ministry. At the time, I thought about various ways my hands might be used – for consecrating the Eucharist, for blessing the people, for baptizing...
I grew up in the rural South, where there was not a whole lot of diversity. Though I knew about the Jewish faith, I did not really know any practicing Jewish people growing up. It wasn’t until adulthood that I became friends with a practicing Jewish person. She took me to...
This Saturday our parish has its Annual Fall Fair – a festive gathering with vendors, food, children’s activities, raffles, and other fall merriment. We are blessed with an 11-acre property, so the event is a wonderful way for us to welcome people to our grounds and remind the...
