The Peregrinating Parson

I attended the ordination of a friend on Sunday (congratulations to The Reverend Mr. Bob Nolan!). The Senior Pastor of his church, who is also a friend, Rev. Scott Spencer, had a beautiful reflection on the Woman at the Well during the service. Scott said that what the Church Universal has to offer the world today is water for the spiritually thirsty in the form of grace. God’s unconditional love, he said, should be at the heart of everything we as individual Christians do and the motivating force behind everything our churches do. He’s right, and I will come back to what our churches can do in another post; for tonight, the topic is the civil grace for which we thirst in America. Last night’s debate did very little to change the impressions of the denizens of either Camp Clinton or Tower Trump. Perhaps some undecided voters were swayed to one or the other, although based on the somewhat representative population of my Facebook feed, not many moved fully into one or the other colu

I have spent the last many days mulling over the screaming match we have had as a nation about Colin Kapernick and those who have emulated his protest during the national anthem at a pre-season NFL game. I have incredibly mixed feelings about this because of my background and my education…those who know me will not be surprised that this is yet another “both-and” subject in my reckoning. I’ll start with where I stand as the daughter of a US Army retiree who wanted a military and government service career of her own. My dad, like millions of men and women before and after him of every color, race, and creed in this nation, served his time in the military and went to war. He spent all but six weeks of the first year of my life in Vietnam; he was lucky to be able to change his deployment date from February of 1969 to May of 1969 so he could be present for my birth. He came back from Vietnam and spent another 11 years in uniform, then just over 20 years in the civil service with the D

The interviews have been had, the paperwork and the background checks are mostly done, and now I wait. I’m a pretty patient person when it comes to letting things take their course. When I’m without a steady income and needing to be earning money—because some companies are not at all understanding when it comes to late payments!—it’s really, really hard to wait for the phone calls that say, “We need you!” It’s not about the money, ultimately, even if that’s the presenting issue; it’s about being a productive member of society using the gifts and skills I have developed over the years to teach and to preach. I trust that everything will be okay, I’d just like God to work a little faster… Now, the good thing is that when I’m not working, I am actually writing. The manuscript for the book is well and truly underway after the preliminary work to convert internal references to footnotes, which are much easier to track down and expand. I have a truly terrible overview and a worse “

Ah, America: The land of corporate hegemony where conglomerates think they can intimidate you into accepting their version of things. COMCAST has vastly improved their customer service in the past 3-4 years. Whenever I had a problem with my cable, internet, or phone service, I got friendly and efficient answers and help. They worked hard to be sure that I remained at least a somewhat satisfied customer, the ridiculous cost of their services notwithstanding. Even when I called to cancel my services when I was preparing to leave Pennsylvania, the customer service agent I spoke with was incredibly helpful and knowledgeable. She walked me through how and where to return my equipment, explained that the “stop bill date” would be about 10 days earlier than the actual service would stop in case something changed in my plans (because “these things happen” and they never want anyone to be without at least internet and phone), and that I would be owed a refund because their records indi

I went to my “home” church this morning, Second Congregational Church UCC in Attleboro. My friend and colleague, Rev. Vern Wright, preached on Philemon today and had an excellent message. I hope he posts the manuscript on the church’s website, so I won’t recap what he said. This post is inspired by Vern’s sermon, in which he made the analogy of a computer’s “reset button” as a way to think about how we change our relationships with God. Once upon a time, I was a PC aficionado. You couldn’t have paid me to buy an Apple product because I had a really bad experience in a computer “science” class in college with an Apple IIc that would never do what I wanted it to do. “Science” is used loosely because that’s how the course was listed in the catalogue, but it was really an end-user course on graphic design and word processing. Anyway, it soured me on Apple for a long time. I have been a power user of Microsoft products for over 25 years. But that dreaded BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH haunte