This coming Sunday belongs to Mary, the mother of Jesus, the peasant girl, the God-bearer.  Mary’s partnership with God is what makes Advent possible.  In this, she is a model for all of us.  The angel comes, at some unexpected time, and gives an invitation into risk, the unknown, sacrifice, the holy burden of bringing forth life. I have a friend, an American I met in Egypt, who has traveled all over the world.  He takes pictures and writes stories, and he’s good enough to make a living at it.  I remember him saying at some point: Whenever I feel despair I remember that I am carrying a story within me that needs to be born into the world. Another friend, a pastor, has repeatedly claimed Mary’s magnificat throughout the horror show that has been Trump’s Presidency.  “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly,

Why do we enjoy some things and not others?  I don’t know.  Why do I enjoy building things, playing strategy games, and washing dishes, but don’t particularly enjoy planning out a garden, craft-making, or cooking?  Why do I enjoy listening to others play guitar but struggle to find enjoyment in playing my own?  If I enjoyed it more, I might enjoy getting better, thus adding to the enjoyment.  I imagine it’s a combination of conditioning, genetics, and…cultivated capacity – or something like that.  I’ve been thinking about that last one more and more during the pandemic.  With regular activities and routines thrown out of whack or just cancelled, one ponders the question of enjoyment.  What do I have to do to make life work right now, and what might I do simply because I enjoy it, and is there a way to better enjoy the necessary stuff?  I like that

I recently finished the book Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age by Bruce Rogers-Vaughn.  It is aimed specifically at pastors and others in caring professions, but I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in exploring the ways that neoliberal capitalism negatively affects our social, interpersonal, and psychological health and (more importantly) what we can do to reverse those troubling trends.   Rogers-Vaughn spends much of the book defining neoliberalism and convincing readers of the many ways these kinds of systems create a new and unique form of distress he calls “third-order suffering.”  This new form of suffering underlies other, more overt forms of suffering but creates a normalized and ongoing sense of isolation, shame, and meaninglessness that has no clear cause.  By the end of the book, he suggests three interrelated things that we as a society must do: cultivate and strengthen collectives, care for souls, and amplify hope. 

Being the big kids on campus, a select group of 4th graders at JC Sommer Elementary are entrusted to be “Fourth Grade Ambassadors.” It is a program in which this group has the opportunity – nay, responsibility – to serve the younger kids at school in various ways: By welcoming them to school each day, helping them get to the right places, and just basically being a guide for the Kindergarteners – 3rd graders. A couple of weeks ago, I was taking out our recycling and found a typed note in our mudroom. It was written by my son, Isaac: “I matter because I am a Fourth Grade Ambassador. I get to greet people at school and I get to say ‘hi’ to EVERYBODY. I get to tell them that their day is going to be amazing. It is really nice to see other people when you know that you

I am a “neo-Luddite,” have general reservations about each new “e-thing.”  I get unhappy facing a computer change.  My PC at home is 11 years old; I’ve never learned how to use a fingerswipe pad; and I’m unsure how a “tablet” differs from a “laptop” – but I’ve been told I’ll have one soon and learn to use it). On Friday, March 13, preparing computer files at work for the promised connectivity on my home machine the next Monday, the first day of “working from home,” I gamely accepted that I could and would learn that and keep working.  And it happened, assisted by IT staff who proved more helpful in their cyclonic turmoil than I expected.  Two weeks later we were presented with “Global Connect” and I adapted to that, which allowed us to do all our work as quickly as in the office.  After decades of promising “the