by Jennifer Hackbarth I feel like people often ask me this question when they find out I am a solo pastor, part of a clergy couple, a mother of two young children—and I don’t live near my family. This question immediately makes me feel terribly defensive. I start to wonder what the questioners are really [...]
Weekend with Friends
by Lee Hull Moses It was a beautiful weekend in late October, when the rest of the country was already slipping toward winter. Fall lingers in North Carolina, though, so on Saturday afternoon some good friends and I sat outside for hours on the patio of a nearby winery, marveling at the colors cascading down [...]
In the Waiting
by Audra Abt At a recent workshop for clergy, I got into a conversation with a colleague now 20 years into her ministry. Over coffee during one of the breaks, I was sharing some of the difficulties of being minimally employed and working from home. As an extrovert and a new priest excited about parish [...]
The Show Must Go On
by Name Withheld It’s not every day that a greeting card changes the way you live your life, but several years ago I saw one that did just that. On the cover it said, “Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.” From the first moment I read those words, I knew they were spot-on, and [...]
A Thin Line
by Teri Peterson At worship recently the anthem was a duet titled “Why is There Such a Thin Line?” and included such questions as “Why did God make such a thin line between darkness and light, peace and war?” etc. It was a haunting piece of music with strange harmony and dissonance to complement the [...]
For our Enemies: Between Self-righteousness & an Abiding Hope
by Heidi Haverkamp This morning, when I saw “BIN LADEN IS DEAD” plastered across the New York Times web page, I found myself surprised. Not that he’d been assassinated, but that the event was making headline news. Osama bin Laden has been in hiding for years and hasn’t seemed to have much real power for [...]