Confession time. I cried, on Sunday, watching the SuperBowl. This may be surprising to you; I am not, after all, either a Falcons or Patriots fan, and although I am married to a Massachusetts man our household is rather indifferent to sports. You may know that for my whole life I attended schools that lacked football teams (leading to the clever joke:…
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Posts by adminMpc (Page 8)
On Sunday, Miles McKey came to Youth Group and we talked about the liberal/conservative divide, in advance of the upcoming Arlie Hochschild book talk on the same topic. I asked for a show of hands with youth and advisers alike, and found that nearly all of us have: 1) avoided talking to people who have very different politics than we do 2)…
Some prayers were answered this week. The Women’s Marches were successful, peaceful, powerful, and beautiful… and despite what our president may say, they were huge. Prayers are being answered. And because of this, we find ourselves in a theological quandary. Bear with me – you may not see the quandary. The problem is, when things go well, we will feel that we…
In the midst of this week of great cognitive dissonance, in the days between celebrating the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and inaugurating our 45th president, in these short days and long dark rainy nights, I have found a new joy and blessed distraction: creating mosaic art. When we were preparing the manse for move-in, our contractor and adviser, Leonard Nielsen,…
My favorite magazine, Sojourners, greeted me this week with a set of challenges. “Welcome to a season of holy resistance,” it began, and continued to exhort all the justice-minded preachers, leaders, and church members who make up its readership to “be of good courage” facing 2017, and to “get busy.” As the year begins and the inauguration approaches, those of us who…
Happy New Year! How were your holidays, this year? I find the last holiday of the year to be an awkward and artificial one. I’m awful at staying up until midnight, and I dislike the social pressure that points so many people toward binge-drinking and shallow connections at parties. But the first holiday of the year I do enjoy, as a time…
This week, though some of us are scattering for holiday travels, many of us will gather on Sunday morning for the annual MPC Christmas pageant. This year we are trying a new thing. We will be having a Godly Play pageant, using the Christmas story as it is told in our children’s classrooms. It will be told by a combination of children,…
A favorite science fiction character of mine always warns the reader: love is a debt, and you pay in grief. This person is a traveler to a distant planet in the Mary Doria Russell books “The Sparrow” and “Children of God,” about whom I ought not to say more, for fear of being a spoiler of these excellent novels. This person usually…
Michael and I have had a lot of “firsts” in the last two weeks, with a first night in our new home, first Thanksgiving hosted at our new place… the “firsts” are getting less exciting as we keep going, and I have started looking forward to the “lasts”; the last box unpacked will be a great moment! But this morning was our…
It’s a big week for the Aho family! Michael and I moved into the middle manse on Saturday, ably assisted by a crowd of MPC people, especially the youth and their parents. Together we moved boxes and furniture in the rain, organized dishes in the kitchen, broke down boxes, and tried to fix the oven. Fingers are crossed that the fix stays…