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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Crock Pot Chicken Pot Pie - April 2024
Served as a soup over biscuits Ingredients
Tenderize meat with a fork. Season both sides to taste and lay in the bottom of the crock pot. Mix all other ingredients except sour cream and biscuits in a bowl, then cover chicken in a crock pot and cook on high for 3-4 hours. Remove chicken, shred and return to crock pot along with sour cream. Bake biscuits. Place one biscuit, whole or crumbled, on a plate, with crockpot soup ladled over top. For a vegetarian version, use extra veggies, cream of mushroom soup and vegetable broth. ******* Church Women United May Friendship Day What does the Lord require of you? (Micah 6:8 and Matthew 5:7) *Do justice *LOVE MERCY *Walk humbly with your God. Where: Christian Science Church 2425 E. 3rd. Street (47401) When: Friday, May 3, 2024 - 11am (program) 12pm (lunch) Speaker: Rev. Forrest Gilmore from Beacon: Solutions for People in Poverty Sponsored by Church Women United (CWU) of Monroe County Come for fellowship and join us in service to this community
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April 23, 2024 Beloved: “Do you like cookies?” he asked, and I nearly fell over laughing. He’s the owner of Buck, one of Birdy’s best friends in the neighborhood. Buck is a silky red golden retriever, the only dog who truly matches Birdy’s frenetic energy. Her other bestie is Cora, a tiny cattle dog whose coat looks like a Chocolate Moose Cookies & Cream Blizz. Yesterday I shared some hot spot treatment for Buck and he wanted to give me something. Thus the ask about cookies, and my glee at the idea of me not liking them. Call them blessings, silver linings or, simply, the bright side – they have amounted to a soft landing in a new place, and I am sometimes caught off guard by the gratitude that swells up in me. The beauty of these tiny flowerbeds. The daily interactions between neighbors outside working in their yards and walking their dogs. I feel welcome and watched over when I’m home and missed when I am gone. My next door neighbor keeps an eye out for the trash truck to pass and pushes all our bins to our garage doors so they don’t roll into the street. Such a kindness. Another carries a grocery sack for picking up litter on her daily walk. Another man hides dog treats all over the neighborhood and the pups lose their minds hunting for them.* Best of all for me is knowing these little patches of community blanket every habitable hill and valley, prairie and plain upon the planet. In India I walked through a tiny village carved out of a mountain side. I saw kids in a classroom and shops the size of my laundry room. The traffic was entirely by foot and the occasional motor scooter. But the whole place was as full of life as any neighborhood anywhere. People drinking coffee and watching the world go by. Cooking and hanging up their laundry. Mamas hoisting babies and toddlers as they did their errands. All of it compacted into a much smaller area than I would have imagined possible. The lowest ridge of the village was high above the river at the bottom of the ravine. They came and went to other places via a footbridge to a busy road with a parking lot for cars and the green and yellow taxis called tuk-tuks. India, South Korea, Palestine-Israel, Normandy and Scotland – everywhere I’ve ever been it’s always the same. Removed from touristy places are people living side by side doing all of the same things necessary to make a life, a home and a community, acting out our humanity as we have since we first figured out that feeding one another is a far more efficient way to get through time and space. If one plows the field while another teaches the children and another keeps watch for bears, everything gets done in the time we’re each allowed. Leaving a margin as well, don’t you know, for growing flowers, walking dogs and passing restful time with one another.  This neighborliness is what makes war the horror that it is, the violent destruction of humanity at our softest, kindest, best – living in the sweet patches of community where we are welcome when we’re home and missed when we’re away. I can’t imagine the trauma it must be to lose one’s neighborhood so completely as people do in war, to be so traumatically displaced from everything familiar and necessary to an ordinary life. Heartbreaking, I should think, and all the more reason to remember that life can go from sugar to salt in a heartbeat, so for this moment, we are wise to be grateful and humble for the sweetness of these days.
~peace & prayers, pastor annette *Apparently crows have been finding the treats, causing quite the rumpus among the dogs used to finding their usual snacks.  April 16, 2024 The Thing About Spring . . . . Beloved: I’m going to plant gladiolas* today, last year’s bulbs I never got in the ground. I’ve kept them cool and dark, so I’m guessing they’ll be okay. The daffodils and viburnum are finished and tulips are on the wane. I keep showing neighbors a pink one that has four blooms on one stem – one of those brilliant anomalies of nature. The lilacs are full on and have never been prettier or more fragrant. They are my favorites of the season. There’s a gorgeous bush beside the church front porch. Best of all, my old porch swing is now up in a new place. Nothing soothes my soul like resting in a porch swing, following the news as it happens in real time on this tiny patch of planet. No hummingbirds yet, though all my feeders are hung. A titmouse found the pea-sized peanut butter balls I put out to draw the bluebirds close. Compared to her body weight (0.6 oz), the vocal volume** of a titmouse is truly remarkable. No house hunters have stopped to check out the two bluebird boxes I screwed to the cedar tree just beyond my porch. I painted them green and blue and decorated the roofs with rainbow popsicle sticks. Perhaps the aesthetic is too strong for bluebirds. Chipmunks have completely taken over one downspout, so I called Jeremiah, our maintenance man, to come evict them, about which I feel slightly bad. Slightly, in that the alternative is rainwater continuing to cascade off the roof, eventually ruining my foundation, a $20K fix for the neighbor who just had it done. $20K is more chipmunk appreciation than I can afford.  The whole neighborhood comes alive and I feel myself more alive as well, maybe ever so slightly against my will, against my anxious wish to remain inside the darkish space of my own sadness and anxiety about what the future holds.
But that’s the thing about spring, she will not be held back – not by the worst that people go through, the worst that people do to one another. It’s spring in Bloomington, Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Sudan, and every other patch of planet this side of the equator. A biologist or a farmer can tell it better than a preacher – no amount of grief or war will stifle all life bursting from the ground when its time comes. So while my to-do list is far longer than I ever come close to finishing, I do get to the porch to swing, and am filled again and again with the knowledge that Life itself brings life back from troubled times and places. When the time is right. Do not miss some time outside today, dear ones. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette * AKA glad·i·o·lus, glad·i·o·li, glad·i·o·lus·es ** https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-crested_Titmouse/sounds ~ Listen to the first one, Texas/1961. I love that this recording is 63 years old.
books, and work at our desks. Working at our desks involves lots of stickers, post-it notes and masking tape. We also play hair salon, with a spray bottle full of water – after which we both have to put on dry shirts.
All the joy of parenthood with none of the anxiety and stress, is how I’ve heard grandparenting described. Almost, I think. The sweetness is practically painful at times, like a heartache. But I do get anxious sometimes, not about her safety or happiness, as she has amazing parents who know precisely what their assignment is. I worry about the world in which she’ll grow up, the trouble we are bequeathing to her and her peers. The endangered environment, of course. Endangered economies that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor.** Endangered governments that serve partisanship instead of people and communities. Violence. The repeal of human rights. So many things to worry about when I think about her future leave me wondering if snacks and Bluey are the best I can do by her. The answer can only be no. The hard work of raising kids is not confined to the ones born only to us. It continues so long as we have strength to do what’s right in the midst of so much wrong. Grandkids, our neighbors’ and our own, deserve the safest, kindest, most just world we can leave to them. I am a baby Baby Boomer, born the last year of their era, but not so late I missed the assignment: this world is only as good as good people are brave enough to make it. As believers, we are empowered and equipped for the task at hand. We are people of the Resurrection, for whom fear is off the table, and there is so much work left to do. Everyone’s grandchildren are counting on us. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette *NetNet is Aunt Annette in toddler speech. ** The best book I’ve read lately is Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond. Everyone should read it. April 2, 2024
“Happy Easter Egg!” Beloved: “Happy Easter Egg!” is how the toddler greeted everyone who came and went from the family get-together Sunday afternoon. I expect it will catch on among us, delighted as she was with the perfection of the day. Tiny toys and candies layered in a basket, surrounded by her favorite people. So much life crammed into time and space. No words suffice, so why not Happy Easter Egg? We’ve Pentecost to celebrate before the long trek through Ordinary Time ~ MiddleEarth, if you will; the age of men, as Tolkien described it, where our lives are what we make of them. The Holy Spirit too, should we choose Her counsel and Her strength, available when and where our lives are devoted to more than ourselves alone. Justice, Kindness, Decency and Hope are the missions on the ground, dictated by our liberation and enabled by the courage discovered therein. I am ever so grateful for the privilege of sharing this past Holy Season with you. The choir worked long hours on the music for three services. The Fellowship Committee outdid themselves again with the Easter Feast. Let’s all take some much needed time and rest from church duties this week and gather for a gentle service this coming Sunday. Peace of Christ to you and yours, and once again, “Happy Easter Egg!” ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette |
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
December 2024
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