October 19, 2015 at 8:21 pm
At Holden Village, the community and Lutheran retreat center where my family lives and works, we have a prayer that we say when people leave the village. It’s called the Prayer of Good Courage: O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, […]
October 8, 2015 at 9:55 pm
We go to church and hear scripture and preaching about how we should live out our faith, but sometimes it’s hard to transfer that into our daily lives. Or we’ll see large problems in the world and not know how to respond to them. We say, ‘I’m just one person. What can I do?’ Well, […]
September 30, 2015 at 7:01 pm
At vespers on Sunday, a student—a freshman student—joined Jess and I and the Dean for our lectio divina service. Although Jess and I knew that she was interested in vespers—she had tried to come last week but accidentally found herself in the middle of Catholic mass—we were still thrilled to see her. We tried to […]
September 23, 2015 at 7:55 am
In my conversation with Soren last week, we talked about what I believe in—the core fundamental aspects of my faith, the things that matter to me. I’ve been thinking about it since then and it is so much easier for me to name the things I don’t believe; I can frame my faith in terms […]
September 16, 2015 at 6:14 pm
Heaven and hell. These two concepts have been represented in a myriad of ways and there are many opinions on both—who gets in, if either of them really exist at all, what they’re like, what the Bible says about them, and the list goes on. I have no way of knowing the answer to any […]
September 9, 2015 at 4:45 pm
In my work with Marsh, I often catch myself falling into the mentality that bigger-is-better. Society would dictate that the more people we have in our services, the more donations we bring in, the more prayers we say, and the more activities and study groups we offer, the better off we are and the more […]
April 29, 2015 at 3:34 pm
I have a habit of scrawling messages to myself on sticky notes. Usually it’s 11 pm and I’ve almost fallen asleep when suddenly my brain decides it’s going to be helpful—a thesis for that paper that’s due, a list of errands I need to run, an idea for a poem or a character in a […]
April 23, 2015 at 9:32 am
Possibly my favorite psalm is psalm 8. Although the NRSV version is familiar and beautiful, my favorite version of the psalms comes from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrased version of the Bible, The Message: God, brilliant Lord, yours is a household name. Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you; toddlers shout the songs That drown out […]
Ian, Courtney, and I preached at the Maundy Thursday service last week! Kasey-Intro Tonight, on this Holy Thursday, as we prepare for the footwashing and the sacrament of communion, we take a moment to reflect on the radical image of service and humility presented in our Gospel reading. When compared with the stark image of […]
Last week, Soren and I talked about how I tend to claim an identity that contrasts with the identity of the people around me. He called it the peculiarity within the plurality. Those words resonated with me because I do tend to cling to some shred of individuality in an attempt to maintain some sense […]