During this pandemic, we lament the loss of ballroom dancing. Square dancing was very popular in the 1970s while I was stationed at Minot AFB, ND. In between the squares, the caller would “cue” round dances. Round dancing is choreographed ballroom dancing to a particular popular song and covers all the standard rhythms like waltz, foxtrot, bolero, cha-cha, tango, etc. Combined dancing was on Friday nights and classes for round dancing only were held on Wednesday nights. A beginner’s class had just started. My wife Sally had been working in the ceramics shop in the...
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The theme for our worship services for 7 Sundays in July and August is Parables. The parables told by Jesus in the bible are familiar to us, but can new parables be used to teach spiritual truths in the current day? Worship Commission decided to invite writers to create modern-day parables to present in our worship services.
How would you have handled this assignment?
We gave the writers these parameters for their modern-day parable: 1. center your parable around a wisdom teaching; 2. either write your own parable...
Amidst the many losses of the Covid era, I keep coming back to something spiritual writer Richard Rohr wrote years back and reiterated this past spring as it was becoming clear the pandemic would alter church life for the foreseeable future.
What wrote however many years ago was that he wished congregations could cancel all programming for a year and simply learn how to pray. At the end of the year they could decide which programs served as extensions of their prayers and which were superfluous.
Richard Rohr’s prayers/wishes are apparently quite powerful because that year...
This was Family Center week. Our fourth month of providing food for dinner but with no personal contact with either those whom we so enjoy serving alongside of, or the families we so enjoy seeing relish the crispy chicken tenders, homemade macaroni and cheese, “Daddy green beans”, and the best colorful fresh fruit. I miss the jolly dishwashers teasing me about sending back silverware that didn’t quite get all the macaroni cleaned off. I miss each server who has developed their personal area of expertise and style – Roberta dishing out mac, Maris “selling” milk to the...
In February of 2020 the headline in my county’s newspaper reported that a group named The Second Amendment (2A) had submitted a resolution to the County Commissioners to turn my county into a second amendment sanctuary. Basically these 2A groups are making a preemptive effort to circumvent national and state laws about limitations to the use of firearms. Specifically, the resolutions (there are different wordings) state that the county will agree not to enforce laws that the group believes violate the US Second Amendment. ...