Second Church Steps

We made it! Christmas is over!  Well, not quite yet, it isn’t.  There are those pesky twelve days of Christmas.  The celebrating could go on and on, if we let it! Goodness, the tree is looking dry and empty without a load of boxes and bags underneath it. The ornaments that were hung with surprise, joy, and fondest memories now look somehow out of place.  Can we for one moment stop, and think about this?  Think about that first rush of joy when a new child is born, when you first really felt the presence of the living God in your life?  What about the first time a young Sunday School class looked at you in awe of the wonderful stories you were telling them?  That moment sparkled with hope that was bursting with possibility!  Here and now in the “ bleak mid-winter ” of post-New Years, to borrow from  Christina Rossetti and hymn 144 in the Presbyterian Hymnal Glory to God , we find ourselves in the sleep deprived, post-adrenaline rush, vi...

Ask a small child to arrange a nativity scene and you might get something like this… My daughter did something similar to this during her first “active” Christmas Holiday season.  That's the 1.5 year old Christmas where she was making meaning and learning faith stories as fast as her church family and I could tell them to her. She helped me set up our family nativity set minus Jesus; we did this  because we wait until Dec. 24 th after church to find Jesus in the manger.  She looked at each piece and named them.  Explaining the story as she went through the box of precious figures, she placed each one with care.  When she finished all I could see were the backs of the shepherds, sheep and camels.  I couldn’t see Mary AT ALL!  It was all wrong.  As a young mother is want to do, I explained gently that the set should be set up in a “V” so we could see each individual piece. As an almost two year old/who thinks she is an adult will invari...

Christmas decorations are up everywhere.  It is now “okay” to have trees, tinsel, and carols up front and center.  These are signs of the times, and a way that we prepare our homes and hearts to celebrate the birth of Jesus.   Music is a BIG part of the holidays for me. When I was pregnant with my first child, one Christmas carol could reduce me to tears.  Every time!  I’ve sung it for over half a century.  It is part of my Christmas narrative, and owns me in some way.  It is “Away in a Manger.” Away in a manger, no crib for his bed, the little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head. The stars in the bright sky looked down where he lay, the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay. [i] The part that always got me is the “no crib for his bed.”  He didn’t even have a crib!  What kind of world is it that a baby has to sleep in the dirt? Yes, I was a bit dramatic.  Still…it is a lasting understanding that children should be held and...

The end of October is a bittersweet time; the candy is sweet and the wind can be bitter cold.  It also is a time of sweet memories that have a bit of a bite!  Growing up as a minister's daughter  my sisters and I LOVED All Saints' Day music...especially, "I sing a song of the saints of God." Perfect people who do no wrong are often called "saints."   I have learned that those are really called, "people I don't know well."  Everyone is imperfect, and that is what makes us the perfect instrument for God's love.  The flaw is ours; the perfection is divine. Saints are messengers; in a world without Snapchat(tm) they are a glimpse of the goodness of the kingdom of God.         And one was a doctor, and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green... Okay, since our last name was "Green" we really liked that verse-- it was a nice counterpoint to church decoration which was NEVER called "the hanging of the greens...