In early 1986, as I tried to make sense of the shattered remains of an almost 10-year marriage, my father said to me, “You know, my dear, not everything in life can be neatly wrapped with a well-tied bow. Sometimes it just gets put on the shelf in pieces.” I was 34. In the intervening …
Two days ago, I opened the pantry cupboard in our kitchen and broke into a cold sweat. This may not seem a normal response, but just after Easter next April, my husband and I will leave Denver for his sabbatical – three months of sabbath rest and renewal followed by a month of vacation. Our …
Who do you think you are? Seriously. How do you describe yourself? How would you describe yourself if you were as close to totally honest as it is possible for a person to be? Really. And one of my favorite questions, What would you attempt to do if you knew you couldn’t fail? [ As …
Some backstory: At the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007-08, the ministers of the Rocky Mountain Conference of the UCC gathered for their fall retreat. Conference leadership took an hour to alert us that at least two Conference staff were losing jobs because contributions from congregations (which fund the Conference) had been slashed. In …
…and speaking of trust, what do we do with disappointment? There was a stage in my life when I maintained two huge gardens: a flower garden outside the parsonage which was our home in western Massachusetts, and a vegetable garden a mile away in an area offered to residents of the town by a local …
The Denver Botanic Gardens does an art installation every year in late spring or early summer. One year it was Chapunga – the work of a number of Zimbabwean sculptors. Another year were the bronzes of Allan Houser. Henry Moore’s large and amazing pieces were featured in 2012. This year, the installation that is creating …
A wise mentor once gently informed my (highly anxious) younger self that ministry is a lot like the parable of the sower and the seed in scripture. She reminded me that I can scatter seeds with wild abandon, but I should not expect to be any more successful than Farmer G-d. Some seeds will grow …
Watching the fireworks from our home on July 4th this year was a surprisingly good metaphor for what feels like the current state of our country. The first Independence Day after we moved to Denver nine years ago, I was startled and delighted and amazed to see the whole sky (well, about 230 degrees of …
Someone I know is getting ready to leave her home of almost four decades. She knows that it is time to move into a new stage of life and the possibility that she will not be quite as independent as she has been until now. She is wrestling with grief and loss at the same …