So for this Sunday, I was thinking about talking about communion. I wanted to talk about the history and symbolism for kids. And I was wondering if I could instruct people to have their own communion ritual at home. I talked to Fr. Jeremiah about this and without saying, “don’t tell people to do their own communion at home,” I…
Stuck
I write when I feel down or anxious because I seem to feel better when I’ve finished writing. Placebo effect? Like the placebo effect when I take a nap to feel better when I’m anxious and/or depressed? Whatever. I’ve heard someone talking about how they, too, are feeling down, stuck, unmotivated. My friend, Leslie, said she thinks it’s because of…
Be a part of the family of God, or else!
This article, Our Sunday Morning Diaspora, from the “Grow Christians” website this morning hit a chord; so much so that I responded in a long comment: I am the Children, Youth and Families Minister at St. Chad’s Episcopal Church in Albuquerque, NM. I have been part of our “online” services as a musician and now as the Zoom-to-Facebook-Live traffic controller.…
Ritual
I am 48.5 years old (tomorrow). And for whatever reason, this occurred to me this morning as I was waking up listening to NPR: I need rituals. The commentator was talking about how mental health professionals are working to help families connect meaningfully with their critically ill COVID-19 relatives. One health professional connected a nephew to his uncle and though…
Refreshed
I finished the previous post a few minutes ago. I’m not sure I got a night of great sleep last night, but I feel better this morning. Partially, I think it’s because of a set of emails I reread from three friends in response to an email I sent to a group as this all started. I know that part…
Tired
I am so tired. I don’t know if it’s tired of pandemic “stay at home” orders, or tired because of allergies, or tired because of depression or just tired. When I was in the depths of depression when Catherine was little I sometimes didn’t feel like I had the energy to cut up an apple. Today I slept on the…
Overwhelm
Remember Distraction? That should be the name of my web browsers. Right now I have five browser windows open–four Chrome and one Edge. Within all these browser windows I have 46 different web pages open. It’s kinda like the web browser version of hoarding. I might “need” what’s on each of these pages for some reason, so I don’t close…
Distraction
In 42 minutes–at 10 am–my church is doing its second Facebook live session of worship since “social distancing” began. Now it’s 31 minutes. I sat down here before 8 am to rework a lesson on John 9:1-41 for preschool-5th grade kids and it was going well for a while. Then our choir director texted that she was sorry she could…
On a lighter note!
The only person I have shared this blog with is Natalie. I was just looking through my list of posts and wondered if someone started reading if they would think I’m such a whiner! So here’s some wonderful stuff that’s happened lately: Because life has slowed, my anxiety is better. Being in the hospital with Catherine was an “in the…
Ministry
Until I woke up this morning knowing I “need to” plan for some sort of distance ministry to my church families, I was feeling pretty relaxed. My “to dos” were things like sort a huge pile of papers that I’ve been avoiding, make sure we had the ingredients for pancakes and make sure dinner was made. Now my “to dos”…