Dear friends, When you think about where to invest, the experts will tell you to look at the Return on Investment (ROI). If you put $100 in a bank account with a 3% per year interest rate, you will earn about $3. If you put that same $100 into stocks returning 7% annually, you will…

Dear friends, When Jesus talks about putting treasure in heaven, he is talking about building loving relationship with one another and with God. There are many ways we can respond to Jesus’ teaching to “put our treasure in heaven,” and sharing our stories must be on that list. I remember working next to John in…

Dear friends, Last week we shared stories of the challenges we have faced in this pandemic. (You can see that article here.) When I created the little slips of paper to allow people to share their stories, I wrote, “The pandemic was hard on all of us.” Was. As if it were over. But the…

Dear friends, There is a part of you that is just yours. Your emotions. Your experiences. Your hopes. Your story. We tend to protect that part of ourselves, sharing it only carefully and sparingly. As I was praying this morning, I thought of the Holy of Holies, that innermost chamber of the Temple in Jerusalem…

Dear friends, The past two years have been very, very difficult. In fact, I would go so far as to say that many, if not most of us, have experience trauma from the pandemic, from the divisiveness of elections and politics, and from the revelations and challenges to our sense of identity that come from…

Dear friends, Have you ever felt that you really belonged? Or that you were known and appreciated? We need to belong. I believe that we all have a need and a desire to be known. We also have a need and a desire to know other people. We are made for relationship: to know one…

Dear friends, One of the most important goals of a parish is to form community. We want community for the relationships, for the friendships, the common goals, the shared purpose. We want to feel included, known, and loved. We want to accomplish things that we can only do together, with friends. How do we become…

Dear friends, On my vacation this summer I read Presiding Bishop Curry’s book, Love Is the Way, and I want to recommend it to you. With the same eloquence, enthusiasm, and charm we saw in his sermon at the royal wedding, Bishop Curry lays out a vision for a world transformed by God’s love. This…

Dear friends, On Tuesday, I walked into our parish hall and was astonished by the abundance of food that had been gleaned that day. Half a dozen volunteers worked to sort through this treasure, choosing what would become ingredients for the day’s meal and what would be given away in an impromptu food bank. Thanks…

Dear friends, In math, we use the “delta” as a shorthand for the difference between two halves of an equation. In project planning, the “delta” is the difference between when we plan to deliver and when we actually deliver. In driving, where V is velocity, it is not so much V that causes accidents as…