 Beloved: As I write I’m also texting with some of my kids about vacation details ~ a week at the beach in October. Sunshine and sleep. Books and good food. Watching the water wash in and out for hours, never getting bored of it. This morning I’m trying to get them to book their flights, but no luck so far. They are probably working - go figure. It’s the best part about booking a vacation months ahead, how it sits quietly on my calendar beyond the summer until suddenly it’s September and time to plan. Vacation anticipation all the way up to two days before departure when I don’t want to go. I get anxious about nothing in particular, just anxious. Halfway to the airport it’s all good again and I am excited and so very grateful. I’ve now lived several months longer than my mother did. Every moment I spend with my children and grandchildren is a gift I try to enjoy for both of us. Nothing in this life matters more than time with them when we can enjoy each other and make memories for another day. Vacation is a privilege not lost on me, but the same goes for everyday life too. Playing with these babies while they are little, knowing they are growing up so, so fast. Yesterday we were playing and the almost-4-year-old said to me: “Can I swing this at you just one time to see if it hurts?” “Uhm . . . No.” “Okay.” I laughed hard at the moment and typing it again now. I can’t think of one more interesting thing to do than that. Which is what makes the sorrows of this world so sorrowful ~ all the wars and famines and hateful policies which starve and steal the precious, God-given time together from so many people in this world. Or illness, like my mother’s. Sorrowful is too small a word - and yet - sorrow is not all this life contains. Grief comes and goes, as does lightheartedness. Each in their own season. Making whatever time we have together a treasure never to be taken for granted. The day outside is beautiful. I pray you don’t miss it. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette Images: The Gulf Coast where we’ll be. Link is to a song I’ve loved for a long time - about the Gulf Coast highway, only in Texas. Monarch update - the chrysalids from last week have not emerged and I haven’t found any others. Yesterday my granddaughter and I counted 9 fatso caterpillars on the milkweed, so we figure they are hidden in the trees or shrubs nearby. We are seeing monarchs so they must be close by.
0 Comments
Beloved: I’ve pulled up more common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) than I left in my little flowerbed, else I’d have no space to grow other things. The first year it got established. Last year the lawn service sprayed pesticide too close but this year I told them to go away and look what’s happened! So many big fat caterpillars munching down the leaves and two chrysalids hanging from my porch eaves. There must be more nearby because yesterday a monarch was hovering about as I puttered in the yard yesterday. My neighbor and I are as excited as kids in a classroom. I pick a tomato or two almost every day from the two plants I put in. A third volunteer tomato vine has suddenly come on. The tiny fruit on it may be big and ripe before the frost. Friends share their bounty, so I still get enough to freeze for soup and pasta sauce. Tomatoes, herbs and flowers are what I have space for now, the exact right amount to leave time for my grandkids, crafts and volunteer work. I cannot imagine ever not growing something, if only in a pot of dirt. Some living plant to tend and trim and fuss over, for the simple magic of watching it come to bloom, to grow, go dormant and then come to life again, ever careless of the unceasing human drama around it.* The slowness of the garden slows down my mind and spirit even as it amps up my body. My watch says I did 9400 steps yesterday! An hour can go by in which I think about nothing but which lavender branches to prune. If gardening isn’t your thing, no worries. Maybe it’s running. Or motorcycles. Or baking bread. But I do hope you have something removed from the rest of the everyday world pulling on you. I hope you have something as magical to you as caterpillars and ripening tomatoes are to gardeners. Because the world needs us at our best these days, clear-minded and ready for the work of being Jesus’ hands and heart. I’m so grateful to be in it with all of you. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette * I just remembered this book: The Sound of A Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. A great read! August 19, 2025 Keep my anger from becoming meanness. Keep my sorrow from collapsing into self-pity. Keep my heart soft enough to keep breaking. Keep my anger turned toward justice, not cruelty. Remind me that all of this, every bit of it, is for love. Keep me fiercely kind. ~ Laura Jean Truman Beloved:
Keep me fiercely kind is yet another on the list of tattoos I’d get if I were to get one. On my forearm, so I’d see it all day every day. Not that it would help so much – since the far greater portion of my unkindness is not in deeds but thoughts. Unkind thoughts. A notebook’s worth a day at least. The progress I have made in thirty years would not fill a jam jar, so I’ve no advice to share save a couple of very tiny observations.
~ peace & prayers, pastor annette * Colossians 3:5-12 * Ephesians 4:21-25 * 2 Corinthians 5:17 August 12, 2025
Beloved: The command strip Velcro has given out, so the pressboard box I use to organize small desk things keeps falling off the wall. I tried new strips on the box, to no good end. I just picked everything up off the floor for the fourth time at least, threw the stupid box in the trash then took it right back out again. It can live on my desk for now. An old friend once told me his camping club had considered changing their name from camping club to guys-who-like-to-buy-camping-stuff club and I knew exactly what he meant. I am afraid to do the math lest I learn I’ve spent more time collecting and organizing my fabric, yarn, craft and office supplies than I’ve actually spent sewing, knitting, collaging and writing. Fortunately my habits are not outrageously expensive, bits and bobs my kids will someday donate to the Quilters’ Guild or Teachers’ Warehouse. But not books. Books don’t count. A new pen* or a hank of yarn soothes, each in their own way ~ fun to hold, look at and play with, to put away and get back out. While books are friends whose presence in my house reminds me of when and where I was when I read them. I remember how they changed my thinking, and my heart, which is to say my life. When I could first read easily, around age six or seven, I’d wonder if I could forget how to do it. I’d test myself on cereal boxes and billboards. I felt like a magician. Half a century later, it still seems a little magical, chunks of inky paper with the power to change a person, a people, the world. I sit down to write these Tuesday notes without much plan. I look around and see the pressboard box on the floor again, so I start there and see where my typing takes me. Halfway around the room to the stack of books by my rocking chair, as it turns out, where the novel I started yesterday lies open. The Testament, by Eli Wiesel, an interesting companion to the one beside it, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, by Rashid Khalidi, each doing what the best books do ~ changing me. Breaking me wide open to see and hear and know again the inhumanity of which human beings are capable, to commit and to endure. I’d like to throw both books in the trash, but take them up again with what faith I can muster, knowing neither will end happily ever after but maybe with an ember of hope. And if not hope, then awareness. Accountability for our own time in this world. For how we speak and act in reference to and toward other people. People who are as in love with their lives as I am mine ~ here in my little study surrounded by my bits and bobs and other tiny treasures. I pray this hot, hot day treats you kindly and you have the chance to pass that kindness along. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette My favorite novel ~ The Glad River, by Will Campbell ; I also love East of Eden, by John Steinbeck. Everything else is at least a couple of ladder rungs below these two. Wendell Berry’s Port William novels and stories always comfort me and make me laugh. *My favorite pen ~ Rare is the pen that doesn’t smear under the drag of a left-handed writer. These are my two hands-down favorites. July 29, 2025
Beloved: Sometime this summer, I crossed into a place my mother never went – three months past her sixty-first birthday. I knew the day was coming but didn’t mark it when it came. Busy with other things, my grandchildren hopefully, or my little flowerbed. Working on a quilt maybe. The sort of thing she lived for, once her nest was empty. She also played golf and walked three miles a day. Her Sunday School class kept her busy going out to lunch and shopping for a downtown Louisville men’s shelter. I laughed when she asked me why I supposed they all put Original Listerine on their Christmas lists. She didn’t see my kids grow up. Or, I didn’t see her see them growing up. Or then again maybe she has seen even more than me these last twenty-eight years. For all our hymns and sermons, theology and study, our best guesses at the truth about life beyond this life barely wing the outer tip of God’s ear, as one writer wrote it. Maybe life within this life as well. Maybe all I know is far less than what I think I know, and I’d be wise to speak with a little more reservation and humility just in case. Do my best while leaving room to learn and space to grow. And spike my grief with hope as often as I’m able – hope rooted in deep memory of God’s goodness so many times before, when I could not see it in the moment. Whatever this day hold, I pray you know how loved you are, how much this world needs you in it. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette A movie – I recently watched and recommend this beautiful movie, Small Things Like These, about the cost of speaking truth to injustice. Quietly powerful. Cillian Murphy and Emily Watson are incredible in it. This might be a good theology reading group event. A Recipe – for when it’s too hot to use the stove or oven
 This sweet grandpa & grandkid picture is from pixabay.com. While I don’t know the people, I do know the deep contentment and delight of being nap-trapped. July 22, 2025
Beloved: Grandkids. I love them so much it hurts. Hurts in a different way than loving my kids. That said, here’s what we’re not doing again – we are not making wet kleenex sculptures in the baby pool. Once the kids went home I netted all the floating tissue jellyfish I could and dumped the pool water down my driveway. This morning I spent the better part of an hour whisking, sweeping and vacuuming (yes, I am the crazy lady in her pajamas vacuuming her driveway!) dried bits of tissue which had bonded to the blacktop. Because they are my grandkids, that’s why, and my role in their raising is widening the boundaries of their lives in ways that give their parents a break and allow them to enjoy the extra-large messes they dream up. Besides, this is not my first kid to love wet tissue sculpture. Her aunt soaked rolls of toilet paper to make artworks of all sizes and shapes. She dried her pieces on cardboard, then dipped them in a paint she made herself, of ground-up sidewalk chalk and water. Once I moved her studio outside, I was a bigger fan of her work. It’s the baby pool, I think, not the whole idea, that I need to reconsider. When she was done, the 3-year-old grandgirl left no mess to speak of. A big bucket of water would work just as well, which I can pour through a sieve repeatedly until not even the tiniest jellyfish remain. They compost easily enough and the water goes on my hostas. Win, win, win, win, win. Until she dreams up something new – or her aunt comes over to play. Such outrageous privilege, in a world where grandparents are doing the most outrageously dangerous acts just to feed their own little ones. Grandparents who would gladly sacrifice their own lives if it meant those babies could eat every day. Twice over if it meant they could play outdoors and go to school as kids are meant to do. Our own helplessness at the knowledge of it is a far lesser trauma than the people in the midst of such horror, but it is traumatic all the same. Trauma somewhat eased by supporting the organizations helping. Trauma also eased by being the best people we can be in our own situations. For me, it means putting my phone away to be fully present with these little people whose very existence brings me to tears. It means helping raise them to be decent, thoughtful people who know themselves not as the center of the universe but as members of a community. It means praying for all kids, parents, grandparents and their neighbors everywhere, for peace – peace inside and outside their homeplaces, that they be safe in the care of those who care for them and protected by the people who have pledged to do so – and remaining hopeful for the day when kids everywhere can play outside with the light and carefree hearts to which they are entitled. I pray this day is kind to you in every way. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette
July 15, 2025
Beloved: I’ve picked one tomato and have several more on the vine. My new hydrangea bush is blooming as are the zinnias and cosmos. My water bill is outrageous. Which is to say summer is progressing nicely, if too sweatily for my liking. For a few early evening minutes a day my entire driveway is in the shade, and being outside is actually pleasant. I play with Birdy and talk to neighbors, fuss over my container garden and get the sprinklers going. But soon enough the setting sun spends another hour scorching my front porch and driveway. Then I retreat to my lawn chair in the garage next to a box fan and watch Birdy splash in her plastic pool. Then it’s back inside for other diversions: books or knitting, sewing or a jigsaw puzzle. The luxury of such a life is almost never lost on me. Central air-conditioning ~ good heavens! A comfortable home with a pantry and full fridge. Books and tools and toys sorted, stacked and organized just waiting to be picked up and played with, by me, a person with time for interests and hobbies. I could make a full-time job of just living in this house. How best to leverage all this privilege is what needles my faith most. How to spend what I did not earn for the benefit of more people than just me? How much security can I keep for myself when so many have so little? I find it so incredibly easy to justify every impulsive inclination of my own heart and mind, and yet I am more than a little suspect of my own motivations, especially when I feel the need to justify those desires and inclinations. Generosity managed by wisdom makes good sense to me, the idea of rooting generosity in a larger picture of sustaining community and myself. It’s a constant exercise in being intentional, doing my best, forgiving myself and staying the course. And believe me ~ I sound way better at it than I actually am. Being intentional more than half the time is the hardest part of all, amen? Rain is predicted every day for the coming week. A good soaking would do my yard and my water bill good. Whatever the weather where you are, I pray you find yourselves enjoying this beautiful season. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette July 8, 2025 Beloved: In this past Sunday’s sermon, I read a good portion of the sermon found at the following link, composed and preached by Reverend Juan Garcia. I share his concerns about the very present threat to our own religious liberty and the human rights of our neighbors these days, which is why I relayed his sermon on Sunday and here. I welcome your feedback. https://cbf.net/outgoing-cbf-moderator-calls-cooperative-baptists-to-faithful-dissent-in-address-to-general-assembly/. In other news, the baby grandson sneezed in my face and gave me his snotty summer cold. The only time he slows down is when we get him in a headlock to wipe his goopy nose, while all I want to do is go lay my achy head on a cool pillowcase. Good thing I like him. Isn’t it so hard to slow down, to behave as if the world might suffer hardship if we take a nap when we have a headache? Were we really meant - designed - to work this hard, to stay this busy all the time? Even when we are sick … if only a little bit sick … sick enough to fantasize about taking a teeny tiny nap before lunch time. (My grandson is probably down for his first nap, and he’ll probably get better faster than I do!) Maybe it’s my mother’s voice I hear echoing in my head, the one that said unless I had a fever I had to go to school. My sister didn’t miss a day of school until she got strep throat in junior high. She had chicken pox over Christmas break! I still hardly ever get a fever. I broke my leg but didn’t miss a Sunday preaching. She and my dad were teaching me to work hard, my mother, and I’m grateful to her for that every day. But I also wish she would have given herself a break sometimes, let herself have a day off from three babies born inside thirty months. Before disposable diapers and central air conditioning were things! I have no childhood memory of ever seeing her sick, ever knowing her to take a nap. She was a good mother who did not intend to teach me that mothers don’t get sick or tired. Yet I breathed in that lesson and struggle now to breathe it out, to let it go in favor of more gentle ones like The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. ~ Psalm 23:1-3 Birdy the golden girl is asleep at my feet as I type, three hours into the fifteen she sleeps out of every 24. Not unlike a ten-month-old grandbaby. Both live close to their own bodily design, offering us a lesson we might choose, should we have the courage to leave laundry unfolded and emails unanswered . . . to rest even when the sun shines.
The air is joyfully mild today, so I hope we all get a little time outdoors. Much love from my house to yours. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette
July 1, 2025
Beloved: My first lavender harvest of the year, from smaller plants the bumble bees are no longer working. They are still swarming my lavender phenom dawn to dusk, with occasional runs to other flowers in my yard, but the lavender seems to be their main source of pollen. Their tiny butts and legs are coated in the purple dust. I trimmed the finished plants back to a few inches above wood, as the video instructed and carried in a tray-full of flowers. It took almost three hours to strip and trim every stem. Tonight I’ll bundle, tie, then hang them in my attic to dry. My kitchen smells so, so good. Gardening calms me down like nothing else. What some find tedious quiets my mind and narrows my focus to a tiny patch of dirt, so that what is happening there is all that is happening in the world, at least for a moment. Busy bugs and wiggly worms about their humifying business give me cause for hope in the Creator who keeps creation spinning just outside our usual sightline. Gardening also makes me tired, not from mental fatigue but from the up and down to the ground, all that bending over and carrying the rainwater I collect in buckets. Dragging water hoses, gathering limbs and sweeping up the driveway, again. All of it counts as exercise, which the doctor says is no longer a choice if I want to live a long time. I want to live a long, long time. The best is taking a bedtime shower to scrub away the dirt and cool the itchy skin, to slide into sheets all clean and tired, like when I was a little kid in summer pajamas my mom made. Clean and tired sleep is the best sleep in summertime. The weather is the best it’s been in two weeks. I hope you can get outside. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette Recipe: The Chicken Salad I’ve Been Making Lately
June 24, 2025
Beloved: Had I known the Cubs were playing the Cardinals in St. Louis this week, I might have rethought attending the Cooperative Baptist General Assembly here. At breakfast in my hotel lobby this morning I felt a little like I’d fallen into a cult. These folks not only attend baseball games, they wear their teams head to toe and talk baseball nonstop! But, of course, there are too many Baptists in this place for me to get too judgy about people’s weird allegiances. I’ve been attending this meeting every few years for three decades now. My seminary professors who used to come have all retired now, as have a good many of my contemporaries. Most everyone here is younger than me. The group is far more diverse, by race as well as gender. Baptist women pastors are a dime a dozen rather than the needle in a haystack bushel when I was coming up. From the don’t-ask-don’t-tell recommendations around LGBTIA+ inclusion just a few years ago ~ there's a table full of rainbow swag and information about becoming a welcoming and affirming church. Other changes are less heartening. Money has grown tighter than ever. The primary goal of CBF is to send and support global mission work. Fewer missionaries, all of whom must raise their own program money, is the most dramatic change of practice in the years I’ve been attending. One of their fundraising venues here is a marketplace where they sell fair trade goods from their respective countries. You know I love a chance to shop and serve simultaneously. Let me know if you need any jewelry, toys, housewares, etc and I’ll be your personal shopper too. Heat advisories are everywhere in the midwest. I for one will not be among the Baptists at Busch Stadium, in case you were wondering. I will be in the a/c knitting or reading or shop-talking with other preachers. Take care and I’ll see you next week when I am back. ~ 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
July 2026
|
RSS Feed