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November ushers in a season of bright orange pumpkins, steaming cups of tea, brisk frosty mornings, and cozy evenings by the fire. It is the month we celebrate our American tradition of Thanksgiving, which has its roots in Hebrew scriptural practices offering God the “first fruits” of our harvests. We honor God whose creativity and grace has given us these gifts. We are to remember with gratitude that life itself is a gift from God. Gratitude is at the center of a healthy spiritual life, growing out of the awareness that we are all the offspring of God’s wellspring.

Here in New England, October offers us great beauty—the brilliant colors of the autumn leaves, the crisp morning air, the scent of apple cider, the sound of geese overhead as they fly to a winter destination. We are reminded in a compelling way that change is a way of life, that a truly engaged life includes countless endings and beginnings, letting go to make room for new experience.

On August 24, 2014, Old South Church's Youth Leader, seminarian Kate Rogers, traveled to Missouri to hand deliver 1000 peace cranes to our our sister UCC congregation near Ferguson which has been ministering so amazingly in the midst of chaos, tensions, and grief. The cranes were given to Old South Church last year by Newtown Congregational Church following the Marathon tragedies. As of August, they have traveled over 2200 miles over the last two years.

Dear Pastor Traci and the Saints of Christ the King:

As we enter summer, most of us hope to find a more spacious life in which we can take time for recreation or release from patterns of overwork and over scheduling that have become habitual in our lives. Yet unless we create this reality, that hope will have passed us by when September arrives. Might we create time for Sabbath somewhere in our week during these summer months?

Pentecost is observed fifty days after Easter, this year on June 8. It is sometimes called “the birthday of the church”, celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit to the apostles and many others gathered in Jerusalem on that day. In Pentecost, we celebrate the Spirit’s indwelling in each and every person. It reminds us that God’s promise is to be alive in each one of us, giving us courage to understand and live out more fully our lives as vehicles for God’s love and truth, grace and hope.

April 21, 2014
UCC Daily Devotional

“For God will command the angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” Psalm 91

Today is the 118th Boston Marathon. It is the world’s oldest marathon and, with over 500,000 spectators in attendance, the single most popular athletic competition in all of New England–sorry, Red Sox. Of course, you can look that up on Wikipedia. Heaven knows I did.

God of hard pavement and uphill battles,
God of where we start and how we finish,
God of city and suburb, of village and town,
God of the fleet of foot and we who stumble,
be with us today, this anniversary day.

Be with the families who mourn,
for whom the absence of a loved one is a hole,
jagged and menacing and too large and deep to fill.
Remind them that death is dead,
and envelop them in Your transcendent love.

April continues our journey through the Lenten season, a time inviting deeper self-examination and spiritual introspection leading us into Holy Week and the joy of Eastertide. This particular Lent, my attention has been brought to the reality of the “new” brain science of mirror neurons, through which we come to know ourselves more deeply by way of the gaze of others. Like a good parent, God blesses each child of creation through God’s receptive and affirming face. Our familiar benediction, based on Numbers 6:25, says, “May God let his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you.

Old South Church’s Theological Book Group has just finished reading Anne Lamott’s Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair. It was a great read. It evoked some thoughtful discussion.

This year, our Lenten season begins on March 5, forty days before Easter, this year celebrated on April 20. Interestingly, Easter is a “moveable feast” whose date is calculated by the lunar calendar. Our world is more accustomed to the “fixed” solar calendar, so Easter offers us a challenge from the beginning, since it cannot be “nailed down” to a specific numerical date each year. The resurrection itself speaks to this elusive world of the Spirit, upon which we depend, but which defies our controlling it. T. S. Eliot’s poem “Ash Wednesday” includes this interesting paradox: