“My husband moves up beside me, from his assigned place at the back of our trekking line. He puts his gloved hand on my shoulder. We climb higher, together, and I can feel more of the heaviness subside and my stomach settling as we navigate the silhouettes of people, snow and rock.”

“This year, as we celebrated communion round the breakfast table and its creche, I realized there was one manger that did not have to be put away. And that is the creche of our hearts, where this Christ child snuggles in filled with warmth and love, and with the power of God to light our way home forever.” 

“Presiding Bishop Michael Curry offers a prescription that addresses this very concerning decline participation in many of our churches and our lives. Why don’t you consider forming a small group in your congregation to explore how to change our lives to “Live and Act More Like Jesus” in 2022?
‘By God’s grace …'”

“I think of the sweetness of my grandmother’s smile when she recognized the images from Isaiah. I recall the years that my grandmother’s love for God has shone in my life, even though I didn’t always hear or receive it fully at the time. She believed strongly in scripture and the power of asking for wisdom before reading holy words.”

“Given the very difficult days that we and all our neighbors are all experiencing as the COVID pandemic, including the most recent new variant in South Africa, I suspect we would all benefit from not only longer seasons of Advent as we continue to journey into the troubled 2020s.”

“…(the hope against hope) that there is in this cosmos the listening, the watching, and not least, the judging, the sorting, which so many of us, for so long have sought,…”

“So, here is this greatly respected British writer and theologian, almost twenty years a teacher at Magdalen College, having pints with J.R.R. at the bird and the baby and winding up a Christian at the end of it all.”

“Someone shares how when they were young, they felt a comforting presence when her step mother was mean to her and sent her to her bedroom. She says now, looking back, she knows that she can see that it was Christ with her. This presence lifted her out of fear and comforted her from the pain.”

“Discernment can lead to many paths, and ordination should not be seen as a better or higher path to serving God. In some cases, ordination restricts a person to a role that limits what God might be calling the person to – perhaps to something more expansive than the parameters of serving the church.”

“One of the most concerning consequences is that we not only are seeing declining attendance but also declining giving and volunteering which is undercutting our ability to reach out to our neighbors as we race into Advent 2021.”