Tim Woodcock writes:  There was a very interesting guest essay in the New York Times by Anne Lamott headlined “I Don’t Want to See a High School Football Coach Praying at the 50-Yard Line” responding to the recent Supreme Court Case. Hopefully you can read it here , but that depends on whether you have subscription and/or how many other NY Times articles you’d read this month: Lamott doesn’t get too caught up in the specifics of the Kennedy v. Bremerton School District court case , in which a good deal of showboating and posturing in the media somewhat disguised the real question at hand of whether a sports coach in Washington State public school was inappropriately using religion to exercise his power and influence over his players. Lamott’s strategy is to sidestep the news story almost entirely and instead critique it by cataloguing the small private prayers that punctuate her daily life. And of course, being Lamott, she writes in an idiosyncratic and entertaining styl...

Tim Woodcock writes: At recent church retreat for session members, we explored in depth the Working Genius model, which previously been presented to us by Travis. It is partly a personality test and partly a tool for analyzing productivity, developed by Patrick Lencioni, a consultant for businesses and non-profits. If you’ve taken a Myers-Briggs test or something comparable before, the gist of the questionnaire would not be unfamiliar to you, but its focus is primarily on how people approach complex tasks and work in groups. Patrick Lencioni I was, to be frank, a little dubious to start with: it sounded like voguish corporate speak, a needlessly novel set of labels for a familiar set of concepts. The use of the boastful-sounding word “genius” rubbed me the wrong way initially and still does a little. Nonetheless, each session member plus Travis took the assessment prior to the retreat and when we discussed our questionnaire results as a group, almost everyone said it captured somethi...

Mike Willock writes: Several weeks ago I was sitting in the hospitality room waiting for Barbara to finish a meeting when my eye was caught by the reflection of the window in the glass covering the table. That’s when I took this picture. The top three panes show the view looking through the window. What looks like three more panes at the bottom of the picture are actually the reflection of the window panes on the glass table top. Notice that you can see things in the reflection that are not visible in the direct view. The reflection actually shows what is above the direct view – the intense blue of the sky and more of the tree than can be seen looking directly through the window. That led me to think about our understanding of God. When we look in the faces of those around us and come to understand and appreciate their life journeys and their experiences of God, we learn things about God we cannot know from our own direct experience. That then raises the question: ...

 Mike Willock writes: You might very well ask, “What connection does grace possibly have to do with a flat tire?” Let me explain. Recently, I drove this car to St. Louis Area Foodbank in Maryland Heights to pick up 350 lb of food and bring it to the church. That’s a trip of about 50 miles, including long stretches of I-70 eastbound at 60+ mph in heavy traffic to Kingshighway, Page and Taylor and later I-64 westbound home at noon. The previous day I had driven to Hugh and Pat Neilson’s apartment on 14th St. to share a final communion with Hugh and Pat and their family before they left for Denver, driving another 40+ miles on I-64 and city streets. When I got home on Friday I parked the car in our driveway and went inside. Later that day I found the left front tire flat. That’s when I took this picture. This was not an ordinary flat tire – not a puncture that would deflate the tire over several minutes. This was a valve stem failure. The end of the stem with the infl...

Photo contributed by Mike Willock

 Katy Gordon writes: Here are two poems in honor of Mother’s Day. The first poem offers a humorous look at the insight we gain as adults at the sacrifices our mothers made to bring us into the world and nurture us. Who has not done as the speaker of the poem here does - present our mothers with badly crafted gifts a camp counselor or teacher coaxed us into creating? (The popsicle-stick pencil jar? the inexplicable Plaster of Paris plate? My mother, being a saint, managed to look delighted every time we presented her with another non-functional pot holder we'd woven from tiny nylon strips, the kind of potholder that magnified the heat of any pan and left a singed plastic reek in its wake. I suspect she still has them tucked away somewhere). The second poem is more serious tone and looks at those lessons our mothers give us in how to behave - those unspoken lessons that are revealed through their example: “Never go to someone's house empty-handed. Whatever you do, make yours...

  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...