As Advent is to the church year, so Samhain is to the Celtic year: a new beginning, a doorway opening into infinite possibility. This year, Daylight Savings ends in the United States on 1 November (the first day of Samhain), so we will have a very visible reminder that we are slowing and darkening toward …
We are on the road again…this time from Edinburgh to London where, if all goes smoothly, we will meet friends for dinner tonight. If it doesn’t go smoothly, we will probably be sitting in traffic on the M5. Yesterday was devoted to rounding up all the things that some of you [I am not going …
My priceless son-in-law was due to travel to Nepal sometime around May 12 as part of a geological research team, exploring rock formation and tectonic plate shift in that area of the world. By sheer happenstance he is still safe in the United States while the world watches in horror what happens when one of …
Imbolc will end on Thursday at sunset and Beltane will begin with moonrise as the calendar passes from April 30 to May 1. This year – perhaps a coincidence, perhaps not – I will be bidding farewell to Imbolc in Wales on April 30 and bidding welcome to Beltane on May 1 in Ireland, making …
Lying fallow is a good time to notice the things around us that are coming to the end of their natural cycles (everything from patterns of behavior to leggy houseplants to the elastic in our underwear). Other seasons are so filled with activity – both inner and outer – that the quiet events or tired …
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 …
When I was visiting my father recently, we uncovered a box full of cards and letters I had exchanged with my mother in the two years after her cancer diagnosis and before her death. It was an unbelievable treasure trove that brought smiles and tears and a strange sense of awe in the re-reading. In …