(Thanks so much to Scott Marrese-Wheeler for his photograph from Hidden Farm Road outside of McFarland, Wisconsin. He quotes Neena Verma, “Twilight, the only time of the day when the light and dark meet and become one.”) God, it is the twilightof the liturgical seasonsand today my Pentecost is a heap of ashes waiting for a… Read More
Saturday Prayer, November 14, 2020
(This photograph shows what my friend Nancy Donovan has created for a feral cat who has been coming to her porch for food and a safe place to sleep for a couple years. This cat cannot bear being indoors with the other cats or near a human. Nancy writes, “Every year I make her a… Read More
Saturday Prayer, September 19, 2020
God, I need a bigger bra. I actually have wanted to say those words all my life. I lost (most) of my lockdown pounds, so I was not expecting changes of that kind this late in life (snow-kissed hair, quilted face), and I wasn’t going to risk trying bras on. I took the __… Read More
Saturday Prayer
God, I am packing my heart-lunch with the smiles of the morning – the enthusiastic beagle crotch-licking the window hanging ramshackle until I fix the cords, the outrage of simultaneous acne and wrinkles, the breeze that brings birdsong with a hint of skunk, the raccoon at the bird feeder, an adolescent wild turkey strutting unaware… Read More
Saturday Prayer, July 25, 2020
God, the hummingbird is waiting while the butterfly drinks, and I don’t think that the hummingbird is kind, or patient or irritated, or any of the many of my feelings when I wait. This morning I pray for everyone who waits — one for a COVID-19 test result, one to re-schedule a cancelled flight, while… Read More
Saturday Prayer
from Isaiah 55: 6-13 God, I give you thanks for trees that clap their hands, and rejoice at pterodactyls, very good bacteria … perhaps good virus. I celebrate armadillo and chigger, and that coelacanth, a Lazarus taxon, supposed to be extinct for 66 million years, is swimming today. I am grateful coelacanth’s waters now are… Read More
Saturday Prayer
God, some I know make a hard rowing today, storm-tossed by worry, grief and doubt, trying to control the compass of the future. Others are in safe harbor and have heard the “peace be still.” Some have come to summer solstice and others are in winter beauty. Some are waking still full of Juneteenth good… Read More
The Politics of Pastoral Itinerancy
Help us to remember that the Holy Spirit, gave not one, but two gifts — the power of voice for those who needed to speak, and, the power of listening for those who needed to be quiet and listen … I am the every-other-Saturday-every-other-month pray-er for our blog and those words were in my prayer… Read More
Saturday Prayer
My friend Dayalan Devanesen, director of Roofs for the Roofless, of Chennai, India, sent me a photo of Gurdon Brewster’s sculpture given to him by his mother. It is ‘Christ Dancing Off the Cross’. On the last of the waiting nights for whatever the “power” is going to be, it seems important to hold carefully… Read More
Saturday Prayer
God, there are many brighter, clearer, more beautiful pictures of cardinals on the Internet, but I meditate on this one to remind myself that I could only see it because I looked out of my window at my neighbor’s house. I only ease the headache, tight band of pain across the chest, dropped details, snap-at-a-child… Read More
