Tim Woodcock writes: With National Poetry Month coming to an end, it’s time to share a poem by Mary Oliver that I had put aside and earmarked a few weeks back. Coincidentally, with Earth Day Sunday in mind, Mike Willock, had also sent me a reflection by Oliver about her relationship to nature, which I will incorporate into the second half of this blog post. I came across Mary Oliver's poem "Praying" a couple of months ago on a Monday morning. Why do know it was a Monday morning? Because at the school where I work there is a tradition, which dates back about 15 years, of beginning Monday's assemblies with a “poem of the week.” Usually the poem is one selected and read by a teacher, but sometimes it’s by a student; it is also a platform for students to share their own poems, if they have won awarded in local contests, which happens with some frequency. It’s lovely moment of settling in and refocusing as the school week begins. Even during the COVID-inflected turbul...

This poem called "Easter, Pandemic" was read in church as part of a recent service by church member Katy Gordon.  The context: During Easter 2020 - early in the pandemic when things were in full lockdown and six-foot social distancing guidelines were in place - Katy decided to make muffins and to deliver them to various friends over Easter weekend. At JoAnn Ford's house, there was a welcome surprise in the form of conversation outside and a tour of JoAnn's garden. "Easter, Pandemic" by Katy Gordon   A friend gives us a tour of her garden – we watch from six feet back. Around our feet, the chickens chirr, digging and scrubbing the ground for grubs. Easter morning.   What better sermon can there be for resurrection than a woman in her garden, last year’s gourds curing on the ground, this year’s seeds reaching towards the sun?

During National Poetry Month, as a church community we are beginning to a collect and highlight a series of poems that are especially meaningful to us. Mike Willock would like to shine the spotlight on this poem by Lucille Clifton. Mike Willock writes: I learned about this poem from a Stephen Colbert interview with Elizabeth Alexander on April 7. Elizabeth composed “Praise Song for the Day” for President Barack Obama’s inauguration. Here’s the poem: at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989 by Lucille Clifton among the rocks at walnut grove your silence drumming in my bones, tell me your names. nobody mentioned slaves and yet the curious tools shine with your fingerprints. nobody mentioned slaves but somebody did this work who had no guide, no stone, who moulders under rock. tell me your names, tell me your bashful names and I will testify. the inventory lists ten slaves but only men were  recognized . among the rocks at walnut grove some of these honored de...

Mike Willock writes: Every now and then a passage of Scripture springs opens in a new way – revealing something that was always there but was somehow hidden from view. That happened to me as I read the March 18 devotion from Luther Seminary, which was the text that Travis preached on this Sunday. The passage was Luke 13:6-9 – the story of the man, the gardener, and the fig tree. Then Jesus told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, 'See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' The gardener replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'" The startling insight for me was that the man blamed the tree when it failed to bear the desired fru...

Ellie Stock has a piece that has just appeared in the Presbytery of Giddings Lovejoy e-newsletter and blog. She compares two deaths - that of Julius Caesar "dying as he tried on hold to power as Dictator for Life of the Roman Empire ... his death leading to continuing intrigue, chaos, and power grabs" and that of "Jesus, dying also betrayed and abandoned by his closest followers" but with a totally different undersatanding of power. Ellie asks the provocative question, "Is Earth moving towards an Ides of March—a death caused by the ambition, competition, hunger-for-power?" and what does the Jesus Way have to say about this? You can read the whole piece here.

As winter is slowly edged out by spring, here are two timely photos taken by Mike Willock in the church grounds recently, along his amusing captions. Thanks for the contribution, Mike. "Even the downspouts are saying what they think about winter" "I’m trying to get ready for spring."

Tim Woodcock writes: To return to the theme of the previous blog post about “ Poems of hope and resilience ,” I was struck by the power of Francisco X. Alarcon’s “ L.A. Story .” The context that gives rise to that poem is the Rodney King protests, referred not by name but simply by the date – April 1992 - that is attached to the poem. But the poem reads almost as well in the context of Ukraine or any other situation of high volatility. The poem is not a complex one. It paints a bleak, dystopian landscape, followed by this beautiful image: o god show us the way lead us   spare us  from ever turning into walking    matches amidst so much gasoline