Posts

Book Review: Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

I started Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande two years ago, as the world still reeled from Covid-19. I was preparing for the Lenten season ahead of time. This book I hoped would be the perfect discussion and inspiration after surviving a global pandemic. Then, my father was placed […]

Ashes to Ashes

Ashes to ashes Dust to dust – Homes destroyed By earthquakes Now covered in dust.

A Pinch in the Fabric: A Reflection on Ash Wednesday 2022

I was in 8th grade the first time I learned there was a Nazi in my family tree. My mom was helping me with a school project for my English and Language Arts class. We were reading The Diary of Anne Frank. I learned much later that my English teacher covered this topic only with […]

Lent is a Season To Tend Our Hollowness

2 Corinthians 4:7, “But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” Lent is a tough season in the liturgical calendar. It is a time for preparation, which means that it is a time for spiritual […]

What God Can Do with Dust

Our fifth frozen embryo transfer (FET) was on Ash Wednesday last year. Our first pregnancy ended on an Ash Wednesday three years before that. In between those experiences, Lent became a time not for deepening my connection with God but to try and wrangle my body into pregnancy through fertility treatments. I did not know […]

Should and Should Not: Just Trust

When I began to write about God, I was 20 years old, reeling from the end of a four-and-a-half-year relationship, and still struggling to piece together my faith two years after returning to Christianity after a long period of agnosticism. There was very little that made sense to me that summer as I ached for […]

Come to the Table

Many years ago, my friend had a young daughter with serious medical issues who had to be hospitalized for several weeks. Understandably, my friend was under enormous stress and she did not have the time, energy, or desire to cook. Her priority was being with her daughter in the hospital. So, for these weeks, she […]

A Poem on the Eve of Lent

God’s beloved dust, fabric of the universe— of planets newly discovered and ruins ancient, broken and us. God’s beloved dust, we’ll walk into wilderness on a Wednesday— a wilderness of words and want and wonder, a wilderness for the wise and the weary. God’s beloved dust, ushered from pew to pastor, they will pause. Eyes […]

Communion in the City

There’s a story, a myth perhaps, about a congregation that stopped all activities during Lent. That season they gathered for Sunday worship, and then the pastor and elders visited the homes of everyone in the congregation to serve communion. They held no meetings and no rehearsals – only worship on Sundays and in homes. Anytime […]

Turbulent Waters: Discovering Church

Sleepily nursing my eight-day-old daughter after sending my one- and three- year olds off to school, I considered that it was Wednesday. Not just any Wednesday, but Ash Wednesday. I felt something stir deep within my exhausted, still healing body: “I want to go to church today.” Not to preside, but to be present at […]