Pastor Annette's Blog
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"OF ALL THE THINGS GOD HAS SHOWN ME, I CAN SPEAK BUT A LITTLE WORD . . . NOT MORE THAN A HONEYBEE CAN CARRY AWAY ON ITS FOOT FROM AN OVERFLOWING JAR."
~ MECHTHILD OF MAGDEBURG, 13TH CENTURY MYSTIC |
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“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.” ~ Alice Walker, The Color Purple
digging up their hateful saplings. I finally had all three trees removed to make a raised bed garden in that space. Meanwhile, the lilac bush has come into her own and is exploding with these dark violet flowers, thus Shug’s comment from The Color Purple. You only have to glance at her to see how hard that purple lilac bush is working to be noticed.
I wonder what I miss simply for being too busy with lesser things, lesser than the ways God is trying to please me as I hurry through a day. What joy or encouragement might I have received? What new burst of hope or awareness of the Holy Spirit in our midst? Even now I feel the pinch of needing to finish writing and move on to other things. Why? Why not sit with this thought for as long as this thought might sit with me? What better thing have I to do than consider what God is doing here and now, in and through this time and place? Surely I am better for it . . . and better to those around me; kinder and more attentive; more patient and good humored. We are a funny bunch, amen? Wanting deeper faith . . . immediately. Knowing all the while that deeper faith flows slowly and into the stillest of waters. Springtime has so many gifts to offer. Take the time to gather yours. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
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April 19, 2022
Beloved: What a beautiful weekend of High Holy Days’ worship and fellowship. So many thanks to Rob, the choir, and Fan for leading us through the Good Friday service, as well as to the Fellowship Committee for their beautiful work on Sunday’s Easter Feast. It’s my favorite church season by far. I also love these weeks after Easter when the Church works her way back toward the Ordinary Time of worship, fellowship, and service in our life together. This spring feels especially and wonderfully ordinary as we approach our one-year anniversary of post-pandemic in-person worship for nearly a year! (Yes, I remember the winter set-back . . . but let me be excited!) I am looking forward to adding more programming back into our schedule as we move into summer and next fall. For now, I have the week off preaching, and I’m using the study time to read Thomas Merton’s No Man Is An Island. So far I’m finding something to love on every page, like these thoughts:
In the meantime of this day, may the Risen Christ be ever close to you as you live out his calling in this place and time. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do . . . they know not what they do . . . .” April 12, 2022
They are the most powerful lyrics of our Good Friday service every year. I never hear them without being a little shaken. They come to mind now having just watched a news clip of a Ukrainian woman discovering her son’s body, murdered and stuffed into a well. I know, an offensive, appalling thing to write into a morning devotional. Nevertheless . . . the woman was wild with grief, inconsolable to say the least. I couldn’t help but wonder what if that was my Ben, so cold and alone in the ground. How could I not rise up in hate toward those who had done it? I have no idea how to preach the forgiveness we sing on Good Friday. I wouldn’t dare suggest it to mothers and fathers whose children are slaughtering one another every day in Ukraine. I only know that this grace is the heart and soul of our faith, and without it we have nothing else. Grace that somehow forgives the most unimaginable offenses. Grace that preaches the power of love to release us from the choking sorrow of grief and hate. I can type the words but I don’t begin to understand it. Not for a single moment. In some ways, I pray not to. I pray not ever to know such sorrow or grief. That mama is still on my heart. I can pray for her, that she has good friends, people to sit with her and remember her boy. I wish her deep comfort in his memory and a swift end to the nightmare around her. I pray for the ten thousand and more other parents like her, for the healing that will not begin until the nightmare ends. May their grief inspire us to better prayer and braver faith in our own daily lives this Holy Week. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
Every time I’m in the city, visiting museums to learn more on the subjects I care most about, I am once more overwhelmed by the horror human beings commit against each other. I come away wondering how it’s possible we carry on with normal life as if the horror hasn’t happened, with the sensation we ought to be paying full attention to these memories, these realities, to them and only them, until we establish once and for all, no such horrors can be allowed to happen anywhere ever again. To leave the Holocaust Memorial* and stand once more on the city street, watching ordinary traffic on an ordinary day, seems positively wrong. Wrong in every way. And yet, here we are. I still can’t get my head and heart around the reality of another war of annexation in Europe, right now in 2022. In the same spring our capital hosts a cherry blossom kite festival, another is documenting war crimes ~ murderous crimes carried out shamelessly in the light of day, videoed and posted for everyone with eyes to see. Again, in 2022 Europe. Making it our turn. Our time to choose what we will do, in practically the exact circumstances as our grand-parents, except we have better information, and in real time. What we thought they should have done is now ours to do, to get right, whatever courage and faith and grace such circumstances demand. I can’t say I know for sure, beyond the three commands I take to heart daily: kindness, justice and humility. They are hardly passive words. They are the words of big love for hard times. May all of us be found faithful. * or the Museum of African American History & Culture, or the Museum of Native American History, or the exhibit of American War in the Museum of American History |
I write a Tuesday morning devotional to members and friends of UBC. It is also posted here.
Enjoy! Pastor Annette Copyright
Everything on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons license, which gives you permission to copy freely, provided that you attribute the work to me, that you use the work for non-commercial purposes, and that you do not produce derivative works. Archives
March 2025
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