Keep On Keepin’ On

Sermon preached on the UUCV Zoom Channel during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Sacramental Rebellion

When I was in fourth grade, I stood on a chair in my elementary school cafeteria and gave my first protest speech. We were having a dish called Johnny Marzetti for lunch for the sixth time in a month, and I was NOT happy about it. Did we enjoy having runny-mystery meat -tomato sauce-noodle glop over and over? No we did not! So 8 year old me led a gaggle of frustrated small children in a chanting chorus of “WE WANT DIFFERENT LUNCH!” for about two minutes until a teacher finally noticed and made me get down…and then she said the magic words. You’ve just earned yourself a trip to the principal’s office.

It’s a Wonderful Life

December 17, 2010. 11:00 AM. Scranton, PA.

It’s 8 days before Christmas. Roughly two weeks before the end of the year. I’m sitting in my office, typing away on my laptop, coffee mug on the warmer plate, listening to the hum of my aquarium filter as my fish swim back and forth in their tank. The office is quiet, but I’m swamped with last-minute, end of the season tasks that I have to accomplish before I can go be with my family on Christmas Eve.

Seen. Known. Loved.

A long time…a lifetime….ago, a piece of spoken word poetry wormed its way into my heart. Not the whole piece, just one line, but it’s stuck with me for decades now. 

“To be seen is to be known, and to be known is to be loved, and you see me.

You SEE me.” 

“Chronic, High Functioning Anxiety”

I had my first full-blown, PTSD/Anxiety induced panic attack in several years yesterday.

I mean, I had one after my accident in February, but that was mainly because I hit my head so hard I didn’t know where I was or what was happening, and I was in such severe pain that I hyperventilated.

No, yesterday was a straight-up, every-button-pushed-at-once panic response.

Becoming 9/12 People in a Post-9/11 World

On the northeast tip of North America, on an island called Newfoundland, there’s an airport.

 It used to be one of the biggest airports in the world. And next to it is a town called Gander.

They have a two person police department, an SPCA, an elementary school, and a culture of kindness that, in the days following the darkest, most awful day in recent history, changed people’s lives forever.

Born Again?

A couple of weeks ago, I got a text from our minister — she had a nasty cold and couldn’t talk. So she asked if I would cover the service the next day.  This is that “quick and dirty” sermon. Sometimes, those are the ones that force me to think the most about the topics that are the hardest for me.

And Hope Rose Like the Dawn….

CONTENT WARNING: RAPE, ABORTION

Running From the Dragon

I will never forget the day I was hit with the realization that my body had betrayed me.

It was an afternoon last October, when I stood, looking at the stage at HMAC, and realized that I couldn’t climb the 5 steps to get onto it without falling over, because there was no handrail and I was too unsteady on my feet to do it without my friend Eric holding both of my hands on the way up and again on the way down.

DO SOMETHING

I was 17 years old when I discovered Gandhi. I had just graduated from High School and was spending the summer before I went to college working as the assistant head counselor at a religious summer camp in central Ohio. One of our international exchange staff was from Brussels, and he had a tattoo on his back, between his shoulder blades. It was the COOLEST tattoo I’d ever seen. Okay, to be fair, it was one of the only tattoos I’d ever seen…you know, growing up like I did, we didn’t have a chance to see many of those. It was in Hindi, so I didn’t know what it said, but I knew that I LOVED IT.