This is a Christmas gift for C (little she-who-is), who is afraid of Santa. The pseudonyms don’t quite work but you get the idea.
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would […]

Today was mommy-daughter time with little she-who-is. Look what we made!

We’ve definitely refined our technique—I got the consistency of the icing better. Last year’s was the Salvador Dali house.
It took us all day: assemble walls, nurse J, put on roof, nurse J… etc.
And here is the side that M helped with:

In other tales of domesticity, […]

So it’s a Clear Channel Christmas again—the holiday hits have been non-stop since about a week ago. Since it’s such an early Thanksgiving, this year’s CCC season may be the longest on record. This year in honor of those broadcast heroes, I am working on a complicated theorem to explain CC programming.
I think the […]

This past Sunday, Pentecost Sunday, was my fourth anniversary at Suburban Presbyterian Church.
It was a beautiful service, and always is every year. We have a huge round communion table that the flower guild fills with red, orange and yellow candles—twenty-five or thirty of them, at various heights, on a lovely red tablecloth. The effect is […]

I had a nice Mother’s Day yesterday.
I had the day off from church—it was Youth Sunday, and Senior Pastor and I alternate taking off the “special” Sundays. So I slept until 8, when R brought in the newspaper. Then I dozed/read until 8:30 when the girls brought in breakfast—eggs, homemade biscuits and strawberries.
C gave me […]

C: I don’t feel Jesus in my heart today.
R: That’s OK. Sometimes we don’t.
C: Well, maybe he’s the one making it go ker-thump, ker-thump.
Had Easter dinner this afternoon with The Traditionals, a wonderful family who seemed to invite truly random people to their house. You could tell there was none of that dinner party, “Whom […]

Well, the Clergy Superbowl is almost upon us, and so, I have offered up this Friday Five (with apologies for the irreverent title):
1. Will this Sunday be Palms only, Passion only, or hyphenated?
Hyphenated. Palms at the beginning, Passion at the sermon (I’m preaching), Communion at the end. I’m sure by the end of the service […]

I have a cold, durnit.
Conflicts are being worked through.
The divine miss m was downright giggly all evening.
Little she-who-is sounded out “no” on a sign.
I am doing chapel for the three-year-old classes at preschool tomorrow.
In past years the chapel teacher has done a very generic “Easter means new life, spring and flowers and butterflies” message because […]

Wow. Preach three services, teach Sunday School, then host seven girls in your home. That’s the very definition of a full weekend.
So I’m leaving tomorrow for Woo-woo Guru Deep Breathing Angels on Pinheads Retreat. I need it so badly. Don’t we all? Aren’t we all overworked and overstimulated?
It has been a real push to get […]

So we have four services on Christmas Eve. The first is a children’s pageant. This year I will be working the nursery for that service, with the assistance (?) of little she and miss m. As a parent, I never get to volunteer in the nursery, so I’m excited about that.
Then we will have our […]

One of my favorite topics:
1. Favorite cookie/candy/baked good without which, it’s just not Christmas.
Our pralines, although we’ve had two botched batches so far this year. I don’t get what we’re doing wrong… I mean, it’s really humid today, but we used to make them in Houston!
2. Do you do a fancy dinner on Christmas Eve, […]

Some of the readings for the Lessons and Carols service on Sunday, adapted for “speakers’ choir”:
Still to revise a bit (suggestions?), and figure out who will be saying what, and rehearse, and did I mention that now it’s *little she-who-is* who is running a fever?…
It’s like being nibbled to death by ducks.
FIRST LESSON Genesis 3:8-15 […]

daybreak is a blue receiving blanket
edged in baby pink, tucked tight
under the chin of a world that was
up half the night, wailing.
all is calm, tender and mild,
damp, glittering.
then out of nothing
a silver thread appears, streaks the sky
and hangs for a long piercing moment.
an airplane’s hasty journey?
or a lightning strike, frozen on film?
(I can almost believe […]

from the lovely Songbird:
1) It’s a Wonderful Life–Is it? Do you remember seeing it for the first time?
I love this movie. I try to watch it every year, although some years I watch the abridged version (from Uncle Billy losing the money until the end).
When I went to college, we had to fill out this […]

The divine miss m is much better. She’s still waking at night for various reasons, but hasn’t had fever all weekend. The snot river’s dried up, minimal coughing. Breathing treatments are prescribed through Tuesday; then we’ll see. We’re hoping she’ll be back at daycare tomorrow. She seems to be getting pretty sick of our house.
Meanwhile, […]

So, my love-hate relationship with the 24/7 Christmas music we’re all subjected treated to is well documented. It gets too sentimentally sticky-sweet sometimes, yet I find myself unable to resist it. And so…
1. A favorite ’secular’ Christmas song.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. There are many versions and most of them are good, except the […]

worship
though it’s embarrassing,
like talking in one’s sleep
or feeling milk chortle out the nose.
it is unseemly, the amnesia of the self,
the adoration unto death, the testimony,
against the evidence, that there is
only
this:
the beloved
addressing her:
be loved,
as i am.
you cradle me, but it is i who will
save you, gather you back
from the
abyss;
with a
pair of eyes studying her face, […]

This is just a note to thank you for providing us with nonstop Christmas music during this month—and half of last month too!!!! More than the shopkeepers, cashiers, stockers, Wal-Mart greeters, more even than the Salvation Army bell-ringers who provide a convenient place for me to put loose change and gum wrappers—in this season of […]

the heavenly music floats high, high enough
to catch sunlight,
its pure white patches—
distant through naked trees—
puffed and fat with trumpets,
or combed into pianissimo wisps.
and it came to pass
that the weary world reached up,
snagged the misty amens,
clutched them close
until puffs of angel song
pooled in the valleys of chill,
got tangled in gnarled branches
making the weary wonderful,
a suburb sublime.
you […]