It’s Labor Day weekend here in the United States, also known as Summer’s Last Hurrah. So let’s say goodbye to summer and hello to the autumn.
1. Share a highlight from this summer. (If you please, don’t just say “our vacation to the Canadian Rockies.” Give us a little detail or image. Help us live […]

I have no idea where this came from. Other than the fact that my girls get the hiccups a lot.

There was a little princess; Little-She was her name,
She had a sister M, who was a princess just the same.
They’d play and giggle all day long, and splish-splash in the tub,
Until the fun was interrupted with […]

A man in the church has been asking for prayers for friends, whose young adult son was in a coma after a terrible car accident.
Yesterday I received an update. According to the young man’s mother, a friend of the family who lived down the street was sitting by his bedside while the mom took […]

Jan at A Church for Starving Artists asked a really interesting question (she tends to do that!):

I’m trying to teach missional discipleship [the idea that the church does not exist for its own benefit, but as a place where people are equipped to be sent into the world as Christ’s disciples]. And yet . . […]

1. This weekend is our first (hopefully annual) all-church retreat. This is something that I have spearheaded, though the wonderful retreat team has done most of the work. Ah! Leadership at its best! Come up with a great idea and get other people to implement it!
One of my jobs is to work on […]

It’s Mr. RM’s birthday! Yes, he is old enough to be president now.
As he puts it, “Yes, my age has really been holding me back from that.”
I’ve been thinking today about how we met. It was sophomore year in college, and this is how it happened, with a few edits. From this post:
Put simply, […]

I have about ten minutes until Mr. Rogers is over (does anyone else’s kids actually watch Mr. Rogers anymore, or are we really old fashioned?).
First things first: We have reached our 8000th post, and it’s a family member—brother Matthew. So as to avoid any charges of contest fixing, I will also present a little something […]

This is short enough to be an aside, but it’s too important to relegate to the sidebar. Consider yourself warned:
Any of you who watches Kid Nation is Dead to Me.
No, I am not joking.
DEAD.
TO.
ME.

So I had some time this week to plow through my inbox, project list and checklists, a la David Allen’s Getting Things Done. R and I are big fans of this organizational system, but you’re supposed to do a weekly review in order for things not to fall through the cracks. I had stuff in […]

Please continue to vote on the spoonerism thread o’whimsy. I am pulling for fest breed, since I know nothing about shiites, nerdy or otherwise.
I had spiritual direction today, and here is why a good spiritual director is such a great thing:
One of the segments of the day-long pilgrimage on Iona took us from the top […]

And now for something completely different…
Our freewrite this week in the online writing workshop:

A “spoonerism” is sometimes good inspiration for a humor poem or nonsense verse. Named after W.A. Spooner (1844-1930), a spoonerism is the swapping of the initial sounds of two words to create two different words.
A few examples: “bird watcher” –> “word […]

I’m back from staff retreat… pretty restful time away. Humid, lots of lightning at night. Good discussions. Moderate stress at how much there is to be done in the next few months. Excited about ministry and invigorated to prepare to move to part time. The girls are sick of my being gone. So am I.
This […]

That is the tagline on the Young Clergy Women’s tote bag the conferees received last week. (ChaplainMom, I snagged one for you—will send it soon.)
At least one woman (one of the small group leaders, actually, so not part of the under-40 crowd) wrinkled her nose at the tagline because it appeared to trivialize women in […]

Here’s what’s up, with a question for the internets at the end:
Last Wednesday I had a conversation with Senior Pastor about moving to half-time ministry when I return from maternity leave. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, pretty much since the pee stick turned pink.
The upshot is that I don’t think full-time […]

The scene: Spaghetti night. M refuses to wear a bib. It’s warm today.
And… action!
RM: C, this is kinda silly, but would you be willing to take off your shirt to eat? M gets her food everywhere and she’s wearing a shirt that will stain badly. If she sees you doing it, she’ll want to do […]

a draft

the ripe glow between the rooftops
is a wedge of strawberry pie.
always hungry, i throw on a sweater
and pad toward this mid-evening delicacy.
i step straddling over a wire fence,
scramble up the backyard hill,
ready to feast; oh! it was a mirage,
not a sliver of thing to be gobbled up,
but a long roll of wool
carded clean and […]