Mike Willock writes:  “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” begins Robert Frost’s 1914 poem “Mending Wall.”   In front of Second Church is such a wall. Built of massive white limestone blocks that match the sanctuary construction, it rises near the Westminster Place sidewalk to enclose the plaza in front of the sanctuary entrance. It was part of the original 1899-1900 construction. You can see it in the 1906 photo below.   But, as Frost explains, water and winter frost are not friends to a wall. When I joined the session in 2007, I took the picture below, looking west along Westminster Place. You can see that parts of the wall near Niccolls Hall were leaning toward the sidewalk and threatening collapse. Over the years, rain and snow collected on the plaza, seeped through the plaza stones and saturated and softened the foundation of the wall. Then, hard winter freezes did their work, turning water in the foundation to ice, moving and tilting the wa...

Vickie Robinson writes: As I drove into work last week, I could see the driver behind me moving from one lane to the next.  Apparently, my driving speed and the other drivers wasn’t fast enough for her. As she tried on many occasions to intimidate me into driving faster, I continued to drive the speed limit. After about a mile, the driver quickly came around me, she failed to see the policeman that was sitting in a blind spot. He pulled her over without hesitation. As I looked at this young lady and I thought about the mistakes she had made, not only was she driving recklessly, she also could have hit someone who was getting ready to cross the street. As I witnessed this, I thought about my personal and spiritual life. As the young lady was so eager to speed, it reminded me of how quickly I was with making decisions without waiting on God to answer my prayers. This always resulted in me, so to speak, getting pulled over. If only I had just taken my time and listened to Him, not ...

 A collection of images from our first fully in-person service at Second Pres. in 14 months. (Photos by Don Cochran and Bruce Lowrie).

  Tim Woodcock writes: One of the things I miss most about conventional, in-person church is the stained glass windows at 2 nd Pres. Yes, the people, the music, the sermons, too. All that can be experienced in a modified form online. But not spending time among the glow of the stained glass has affected me more acutely than I would have guessed. During the last two Sundays I found myself in the sanctuary for the first time in more than a year, hanging out on the sidelines rather than fully participating in the service, because Freya was doing a “Minute for Mission” one week and Katy was the liturgist the following week. Knowing that I would be at loose end, I had brought a sketchpad with me and spent some time communing with the images on the east side of the sanctuary (see below). While the significance of 2PC’s windows can recounted, as it is on the church’s website , here I’m only trying to get down some impressionistic feelings about them. Some  idiosyncratic highligh...

Ellie Stock writes: I wanted to share with you a project that my daughter, Chenoa (who is a PCUSA Mission Co-worker in Peru), and I have been working on... Below is a link to a song video "Let the Earth Breathe".  Some background: After Carleton, and I "retired" from Northminster Presbyterian Church in Dellwood in 2011, we decided we wanted to focus our ministry on addressing the environment from the Universe Story perspective (humanity's common perspective). In 2012 we decided to host a winter/spring environmental film series in Ferguson to start our effort, which included showing "Journey of the Universe." The last program in May was not a film but the "Awakening the Dreamer" Symposium. For that event, I wrote the song "Let the Earth Breathe." Out of that event came a core of people who were interested in pursuing environmental issues and eventually became the Ferguson Eco Team which is still active and hosting environmental fil...

Andy & Christine Peters write:   Back in 2006 we adopted a tiny kitten. Weighing only 2 pounds he had a personality much larger than his body. He jumped and scampered around a small shop that had adoptable cats and kittens from the local humane society. He captured my heart and that afternoon he joined our family. He is now 15 years old and although he is showing his age, he has never lost his joyful exuberance and his zest for life. Everything he does is done with his full body, heart and soul. Whether it is playing with a toy, chasing dust cloths around as we clean the house, eating his food with more gusto than neatness, or taking a long snooze on our radiators on a cold winter day, he does everything with a purpose and sense of gratitude. We have learned that sometimes it is best to mimic nature. We have learned from him to live life joyfully and with purpose. We have learned to commit ourselves to a purpose or an end goal without worrying about how it may look to others. W...

  Tim Woodcock writes: On Sunday, Lori and Doug Dowd led a Christian Forum session on mindfulness and art. Lori began with a mindful meditation focused on the breath and awareness. Doug then offered a short talk on drawing as a way to understand the world, proposing that the practice of mindfulness is analogous to the relaxed-yet-attentive state of mind one experiences when making art based on observation. He then challenged us to take part in a low-stakes art exercise: Find an ordinary object – a plant, a household item – and to observe its structure carefully before beginning to draw. He also encouraged us to enjoy the sounds and tactile feeling of a no. 2 pencil moving across a sheet of paper.  Here are some of the results: