Mama Mondays

  God of all time, help us enter the New Year quietly, thoughtful of who we are to ourselves and to others, mindful that our steps make an impact and our words carry power. May we walk gently. May we speak only after we have listened well. Creator of all life, help us enter the New Year reverently, aware that you have endowed every creature and plant, every person and habitat with beauty and purpose. May we regard the world with tenderness. May we honor rather than destroy. Lover of all souls, help us enter the New Year joyfully, willing to laugh and dance and dream, remembering our many gifts with thanks and looking forward to blessings yet to come. May we welcome your lavish love. May we cast off the small, vindictive god our fears have made. May the grace and peace of Christ bless you now and in the days ahead. AMEN - Vanita Hampton Wright

Why Everything You Know About the Nativity is Probably Wrong Sometimes it is terrifying and disorienting to realize you got something wrong about God or theology or scripture. And then other times, it’s pure joy. Almost ten years ago now,  I reorganized my understanding of the nativity story.  And that has been an experience in the latter. The Christmas story isn’t one of loneliness and quiet isolation in the darkness.  This is a story of welcome and hospitality, of companionship and family, and of birth in all its incredible sacred humanness, all entrenched in a culture and a time and a people. Isn’t it nice to know that there is still so much to learn in this old world?  That there is so much we don’t know or can’t know? I used to feel sad when I went to bookstores or libraries because, well,  look at all the books I won’t ever get to read ! But if there is one gift that deconstruction/reconstruction/reimagining continues to give to me, it is the opp...

  Matthew 3:1-12- The Message- Thunder in the Desert! 3  1-2  While Jesus was living in the Galilean hills, John, called “the Baptizer,” was preaching in the desert country of Judea. His message was simple and austere, like his desert surroundings: “Change your life. God’s kingdom is here.” 3  John and his message were authorized by Isaiah’s prophecy: Thunder in the desert! Prepare for God’s arrival! Make the road smooth and straight! 4-6  John dressed in a camel-hair habit tied at the waist by a leather strap. He lived on a diet of locusts and wild field honey. People poured out of Jerusalem, Judea, and the Jordanian countryside to hear and see him in action. There at the Jordan River those who came to confess their sins were baptized into a changed life. 7-10  When John realized that a lot of Pharisees and Sadducees were showing up for a baptismal experience because it was becoming the popular thing to do, he exploded: “Brood of snakes! What do yo...

How can it be that Advent—these sparse days given to grieving prophets and a hard reckoning with our dire predicament—has taken on a measure of kitsch alongside Elf on the Shelf? Advent is ache and silence. Advent is for poor fools who’ve crashed into the end of the line. Yet we’ve arrived at Advent boujee. The Powers of Enterprise have proven they can employ absolutely anything in the service of the holiday blitzkrieg. In October, I walked through a department store’s cosmetics menagerie and bumped into a 7-foot banner promoting a high priced Advent calendar where, each day, you open the little box and receive a glossy lip balm or wrinkle-vanishing cream or glow drops. And the religious industry matches, with the avalanche of glossy Advent product, the press to maximize the Advent season, the pressure to make sure we do Advent “right.” We Christians are adept at bludgeoning flat every ounce of mystery. The truth us I believe in taking any opportunity to revel in whatever season’s avai...

This is from a piece that Nadia Bolz Weber posted last fall, so I know you've read it. But it's worth reading again. I loved what you shared as we went around the circle and shared words of gratitude on Thanksgiving, and this seems to fit right in.  art above by Morgan Harper Nichols  It was raining yesterday when I got to the beautiful building near Fisherman’s Wharf in Victoria BC where I and 15 other people were gathering for day 4 of a  two week long training in community song leading  (note:  not  Sacred Harp related). We brushed off the droplets from our jackets and put aside our umbrellas. The woman who rides her bike each morning squeezed out her long brown hair. After waiting several days until almost everyone else had already led theirs, it was my turn to teach the group a simple song. Nearly everyone else has done this sort of thing before, but not me. At 55 years of age I am learning an entirely new skill. One of the leaders calls us together wi...