Tim Woodcock writes: Back in the summer, I read Annie Lamott’s Help, Thanks, Wow – Three Essential Prayers , mentioned in a previous blog post . While I appreciated certain passages in this 100-page book in it but wasn’t sold it on it as a whole. Before returning it to the library, I made a photocopy of the section about giving thanks, thinking I might be more in the mood for it at another time. In this Thanksgiving week, I revisited it and indeed there was more waiting for me, when I dug into the book for a second time. Lamott’s great gift is her constant swerve to avoid conventional religious language and in doing so, she makes things appear fresh. She writes: You may in fact be wondering what I even mean when I use the word “prayer”… Let’s not get bogged down on whom or what we pray to. Let’s say prayer is communication from our hearts to the great mystery, or Goodness; to the animating energy of love we are sometimes bold enough to believe in, to something unimaginably big, and ...

  "Our parents in faith are watching" - photo taken by Mike Willock, in the portrait lounge during the Christian Forum meeting prior to the Nov. 6 All Saints Day morning service.

  Photo by Mike Willock

A poem written by Ellie Stock, reflecting on recent events and connecting the recent mass shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts HS with other pandemic violence plaguing Earth and all that is in it. Pachamama is a figure in Native American spirituality, analogous to Mother Earth. PACHAMAMA PONDERING, 2022   One more time the alarm shrieks! (Ironically, paralleling folks’   being attracted to Halloween week’s scary, shriek-filled haunted houses and horror flicks, and faux death skeleton and ghost yard décor, while, simultaneously, shying away from engaging with life’s real scary issues) Another mass school shooting! This time, it happened (well, it doesn’t “just happen”) in Central Visual Performing Arts HS, St. Louis, MO (still dealing with implications from Michael Brown’s death, Post WW II radiation waste contaminating Jana Elementary School and other places, and having one of the highest murder rates in the U.S.): 3 dead: a 16-ye...