Dear Friends, With a huge thanks to our awesome adult advisors, I’m pleased to announce that the youth group had a WONDERFUL retreat at Tahoe this weekend! As I continue to unpack, decompress, and write up my learnings and reminders for next time, my Contact piece will be shorter this week, but here are the highlights. – Despite many misgivings and fears,…

Dear Friends, Are you suffering from amnesia? No, I don’t mean forgetfulness or absent-mindedness, which we’ve all experienced, and which are a common part of the human experience as the years go on. And though some of us have even been through the more dramatic forms of amnesia – with whole chunks erased from our memory – that’s not what I’m talking…

Dear Friends, If you’re my friend on social media you may have seen that I am trying a hard thing for Lent. Indeed, for a millennial, perhaps one of the hardest things: I’m going screen-free. No, not for all forty days (I’d die!) but just for Fridays during Lent, which are my day off and theoretically my Sabbath. I chose this discipline…

Dear Friends, Ben’s taking off today, and I’m back in the office. This Sunday was the first time I can remember (at least since I’ve had formal church-leadership responsibilities) that I had to call in sick on a Sunday morning. The cold that’s going around had lodged in my head and had just come to the peak of its slow crescendo with…

Dear Friends, The Lenten season of solemn preparation for the mystery of Easter is nearly upon us… there’s just one last great gasp of festivity – our Mardi Gras – before we settle down into the season. Next Wednesday (March 1st) as the season begins, I and some other local Presbyterians will be offering ashes at Rockridge Bart station, starting about 7:30…

Congratulations to the Youth Group on their wonderful brunch this Sunday! The pancakes were delicious, the prizes were fun, and the chocolate fountain was very popular with the nursery crowd (see below for photographic evidence). We hit our fundraising goal of $2,000 almost exactly (just $10 over!) and were delighted with the turnout for this fun event. When the youth announced, in…

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:…

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…