Posts by admin (Page 3)

January Pastor’s Corner

Beloved Community, A new year has begun, and I am ready to celebrate its unfolding! 2020 was a year of challenges on a global level – a year of resourcefulness and vigilance and constant check-ins for our community. And as strange, fluid, precarious and unexpected as it was, David and I personally crowned the year with a life-changingexperience. As most all of you know by now, on Sunday evening, Dec. 13, we were involved in a serious car accident near…

United Methodist Creation Justice Tips for Christmas

The holidays are wonderful in many ways, but they have an environmental cost. Americans throw away 25% more trash between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. The waste from each of those weeks adds up to one million extra tons of discards going into landfills. These Tips can help you and your family enjoy the season and care for God’s good creation. With COVID more of us will be doing our Christmas shopping online. Turn your shopping green by exploring companies that…

December Pastor’s Corner + Advent Schedule

Dear Fellow Travelers, We are in the season of anticipation! The word alone can make a person jiggly. “Come on, come on, come on,” we wiggle, “Enough with the waiting. Let’s go!” There are many times we wait. We wait in line at the Post Office, for the results of tests; for supper. We wait for our turn to turn left, for the day we can simply high-five each other in person, in glee! We wait. Weary of it all,…

Pastor’s Corner: November 2020

Holy Moley, Friends!!We are in motion!!Make no mistake about it, we are going into winter with NO plans of hibernation. In fact, I feel the need to remind us all that as we do our fall work of putting things in order for the long, cold season, we also will remember the basic safety guidelines that protect us from spreading the virus, which is again on the rise. If you are planning to come to the church building, it is…

Pastor’s Corner: October 2020

Friends, It is October! Why am I so giddy? I have learned to greet the month with glee. I was born on the 2nd day and therefore long ago decided that I may claim the entire month as a celebration of being alive on this planet. I am convinced that the color in the leaves soaks into my psyche and paints my inner sacred space with all the colors of a burning bush. I am conscious of impending harvest in…

Pastor’s Corner: September 2020

Beloved Friends, Thirty minutes into the clergy-only session of MN Annual Conference 2020, I found myself in my sun-porch home office with my computer, my note pad, and a take-out coffee, attempting to digest what had just happened. Two hundred (or so) MN UMC clergy had all completed 4 hours of preparation for this event, had Zoomed together to an opening announcement that included the strange celebration of being “together” as a body in these times of social distancing. Yes,…

Worship Service: Be the Light, Live Hope

A clergy covenant group within our conference has created a gift in the form of a pre-recorded worship service around our 2020 Annual Conference theme (“Be the Light, Live Hope”) that’s available for all congregations to use Aug. 30 or after. Thank you to Revs. Shawna Horn, Jay Jeong, LaQuaan Malachi, Nate Melcher, Kate Murphey Payton, Whitney Sheridan, and Mariah Furness Tollgaard for developing this great resource. Prospect Park UMC streamed this service on August 30 during our 10am worship time.…

Pastor’s Corner: August 2020

I begin to write this note listening to a recording of “Amazing Grace,” played on the sanctuary piano by Kathy Webb. I look up and out our front door and the snow-white squirrel that lives in our neighborhood pops up like a Jack-in-the-box in the lawn across the street.

Pastor’s Corner: July 2020

I have long been fascinated by what Jesus looked like at the time he walked the dusty paths of Nazareth. I noticed early and often that the images of Jesus I encountered in the painting in the Sunday School classroom, in the stained-glass window in the sanctuary (pictured), and the small one in a book in my grandmother’s house looked nothing at all like one another.