by MaryAnn McKibben Dana One Thursday evening several months ago, I met with a mothers’ group at the church. We call ourselves the Night Owls because we meet in the evening to accommodate mothers who work outside the home, although we have plenty of stay-at-home moms in the group as well. The conversation turned, as [...]
Merry Christmas
by MaryAnn McKibben Dana Today we feature two poems. MaryAnn writes: “Last December I decided to write a series of poems inspired by beloved Advent and Christmas hymns. It was a great spiritual discipline for me in the midst of the busyness of the season. I remember sitting with a cup of cocoa and the [...]
Picking the Sick Puppy
by Sarah Kinney Gaventa My husband is ambi-pet-trous, but I am a dog person. He can admire and enjoy a cat’s company, but I remain suspect that cats are secretly judging me and planning to overthrow my domestic rule at any moment. Also, they make me sneeze. I want a pet that will be slavishly [...]
Advent Prayer
by Erica Schemper Lord God, God of beginnings, and endings, God of the past, God of the future, God of judgment, and God of grace, God of waiting, and God of fulfillment: Fulfill in us the coming of Christ. May we, O God, Like Mary, treasure and guard the coming of your kingdom deep within [...]
Stolen Goods*
by Katherine Willis Pershey For the last couple Decembers, I’ve watched the ordinarily light traffic to my blog skyrocket. It isn’t that I get more interesting during Advent; one of my most recent posts was a humdrum complaint about insurance costs in my adopted state of California. I’m a run-of-the-mill blogger, writing for myself and [...]
Rumor Me This, Rumor Me That
by Stacey Midge The town was all a-twitter. The gossip network was running full force. The new pastor, they said, had a man staying in the parsonage. He had been there over a week, visited the church, and met many of my parishioners before the rumors got back to me, of course. I had only [...]
What Did She Just Say?
by Ann Bonner-Stewart As the below true-life examples illustrate, I’ve been known to let faux curse words slip in my sermons on more than one occasion: “The disciples had been fishing all day, and they hadn’t caught anything whatsoever. They probably felt like crap.” “You’re going to break your wedding vows. It might not be [...]
Good Can Come
Another Wednesday night meant another class to teach. Diving into the texts with the enthusiasm of a young child going for the baby in a King’s cake was how I wanted to spend my Wednesday nights. When I arrived in Corinth, I wanted more than anything to share my find with others. I wanted to [...]