Holy One,You cover us with your love,Your grace,Your kindness,Your abundant patience.We need only look upAnd seeAnd hearAnd tasteYour goodness.Our thoughts are scattered,Distracted,Blown and tossed by winds of our whimsy and unruliness.You know us so well…And yet,We are coveredWith your love. Thank you.Blessed be.Amen. Rev. Deborah Vaughn, BCC is a chaplain endorsed by the Alliance of… Read More
11th Hour Preacher Party: Change and Legacy
This week many Protestant congregations celebrate Reformation Sunday. For my congregation, I think it’s third only after Christmas Eve and Easter. It’s important enough that we have planned a 2-week experiment in gathering outside just in time for Reformation Sunday (and rain is forecast for the first time in months for exactly and only that… Read More
Wit’s-End Day: The Sweet Word of God
A few weeks ago, RevGalBlogPals president Julia Seymour invited her Facebook friends to make her choose between two entirely unrelated things. I asked her to choose between Girl Scout cookies* or the deutero-Pauline letters. I’ll spare you Julia’s response, but the result of it was a long conversation about which type of cookie embodies each… Read More
Friday prayer: help us to see and be seen by one another
Immortal, invisible God, how do you do it? How do you put up with people claiming that they can’t see you? That you’re not real? That you can’t be hurt? Certainly I don’t have your long view or capacity to forgive, but I know what it’s like to be invisible, to be told that I… Read More
Thursday Prayer: all the things
Dear God,All the things…all the things to doall the things that could be saidall the things to worry aboutall the things to rage aboutall the things… I would like to finish this prayerby saying that I will entrust them,all of them,to you. But we both know that I don’t have that capacity. It would make… Read More
Wednesday Prayer for the weary
Six more months of masks, no gatherings, no hugs. No, wait, maybe nine more months of quarantine. Or even twelve months until we can go out again, or be together. God, it’s hard to know what lies ahead in our COVID world. Our hopes feel far off, and the memory of our lives before this… Read More
Pastoral is Political: “Pastor, Stay in Your Lane!”
We in the United States are less than two weeks away from nation-wide elections in the middle of an economic crash wrapped in a COVID pandemic and fried in “science sucks” with a side of a high-stakes Supreme Court nomination. We will soon know what kind of United States of America people have voted for,… Read More
Worship Words
If you’ve struggled to find liturgical language adequate to this moment (pandemic, political crises, civil unrest, widely publicised injustices, and so much more), you’re not alone. By this point in 2020, with a seemingly endless journey ahead too, many of us are a little low on creativity. Here we have some contributions from our RevGals… Read More
Tuesday Prayer
The word Croi in this prayer is pronounced kree and means heart. Courage comes from the heartand we are always welcomed by God,the Croí of all being. We bear witness to our faith,knowing that we are called to live lives of courage,love and reconciliation in the ordinary and extraordinarymoments of each day. We bear witness,… Read More
RCL Commentary: Re-Forming Church
Many Protestant congregations will be celebrating Reformation Sunday this week. What a year for it! The church has been pushed in to a reformation whether we were ready for it or not. We have re-formed the way we worship. We have re-formed our education ministries and our outreach efforts and our governing assemblies. Some of… Read More
