Spiritual Disciplines

Holy Week Trilogy Part 2: Strength Together, Solidarity Apart

2 Comments / Holy Week, Lent, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

Matthew 26:17-30; 36-46 Holy Week feels like a new experience this year while living under “stay at home” orders. One day merges into another, and yet again, I forget what day of the week it is. Ordinarily I would be going to services for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and anticipating worship with the family of God on Easter Sunday. Alongside those expectations, I would be going to work and enjoying scheduled interactions at church or in the neighborhood. But physical distancing—now three weeks for us—is stretching my introversion to the limit. Today I feel a bit depressed without the […]

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Self-Quarantine as Soul Rest

8 Comments / Anxiety, Current Events, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

The strongly-recommended “shelter-in-place” guidelines just issued in our county remind me of a season in the life of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. It would have been in the late 1970’s or maybe early 1980’s—can’t remember—and the pastor Walt Gerber decreed a six-week sabbatical for the entire church. Everything but Sunday worship was suspended because he sensed that the congregation (and he himself, I believe) were exhausted and needed deep soul-rest. Quite a bold move for a church in a period of rapid expansion and program development. Everybody needed adrenalin-withdrawal and blood pressure checks while reinforcing spiritual practices. My recollection is

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The Frustrating War Within

4 Comments / Food, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

Every six months, I go through the medical surveillance that tracks the signs of health and/or disease in my body. Last Wednesday, I underwent the CT scan, and six hours later my oncologist called to tell me, “It looks great! No changes! All is well.” When all my testing is done next week, I fully expect the all-clear and won’t have to think about cancer for six months, heart disease for maybe five years, skin cancer for a year, colon cancer for five years, female cancers for two years, yada, yada . . . But there is one dumb thing

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Making a Joyful Noise to the Lord

6 Comments / Death & Dying, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

Hello faithful readers, I am taking a blogging break for the month of June to accommodate the intense concentration required to prepare and sing several choral concerts this month. It’s a spiritual discipline of another sort. I am in the middle of final rehearsals this week, in anticipation of two “bon voyage” performances this weekend in Seattle. After a week’s break, I head to Frankfurt with the Northwest Firelight Chorale, to visit and perform in the Rhein Valley and Cologne in Germany and points west in Alsace and Burgundy France. Crazy, I know. My 62-year-old brain is in overdrive memorizing eighteen pieces,

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What Helps When I Feel Overwhelmed?

1 Comment / Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, Turkey / By /

Technically speaking, I am unemployed. All that means is that the work I do is self-directed and without remuneration. Working at home, alone, usually means work without encouragement or even accountability. My admiration for the world’s great writers grows by the day, as I appreciate more fully the inner perseverance needed for literary productivity. My big issue now is that there are too many other things to do besides writing, each requiring intense concentration until finished—the kind that pushes all other priorities to the margins. Memorizing a lot of music really fast. My husband and I are participating in a

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Colossians 4:5-6: Make the Most of Every Opportunity!

4 Comments / Colossians, Spiritual Disciplines, The Missional Church, Turkey / By /

5Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. I have just spent two weeks immersed in the culture of “outsiders,” that is, those people who are not (yet) included in the household of faith in Jesus Christ. Turkey is, they say, 98% Muslim. Though it has a secular government, its red flag features a crescent and star. It straddles both Asia and Europe, ancient and modern, calm (in the west) and chaotic (in

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Colossians 4:2-6: Stay Awake! Keep Praying!

2 Comments / Colossians, Current Events, Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, Marriage Definition, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, The Church in Exile, Uncategorized / By /

2Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. 3And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. 4Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. 5Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone. I have been a morning person my whole life. In the evenings we have a family rule, “No

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Colossians 3:17: Whatever You Do . . . .

3 Comments / Colossians, It All Started in the Garden, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

A few years ago, my plans changed at the last minute, preventing me from accompanying my husband to Yosemite National Park for the annual Spring Forum. My ticket was prepaid, and I had registered for some interesting seminars. So rather than let all that go to waste, Andy decided to invite his friend Ron to accompany him for the long day-trip. Upon arrival, Ron claimed my nametag, but whited out the tail on the Y to make the nametag say “Marv Naegeli.” For the day, “Marv” lived in my name. I told him before they left, “Make me proud. Don’t

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Colossians 3:13: Bearing With One Another as a Lenten Discipline

4 Comments / Colossians, Current Events, Lent, Spiritual Disciplines, Uncategorized / By /

A Facebook friend was fretting a bit that she had not yet decided what to give up for Lent. She brings up an interesting question. As a born and raised Catholic, my family of origin refrained from eating meat on Fridays. Nowadays, such a discipline is a daily and year-round practice among vegetarians, robbing the deprivation of its spiritual meaning. But being the consumer society we are, chances are pretty good that we are all eating, drinking, injecting, or inhaling something that threatens to get the upper hand in our lives. Something in this category would be a sharper focus

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Colossians 2:16–23: You’re Not Good Enough Unless You __________

2 Comments / Church, Colossians, Food, PCUSA, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, The Church in Exile / By /

After a sugar fast during the month of January and a rather decadent self-indulgence on Super Bowl Sunday, today began my annual discipline of calorie cutting. I have had a life-long preoccupation with food, which I do not consider a virtue but more a matter of childhood conditioning. As Erma Bombeck wrote once, “I am not a glutton; I am an explorer of food.” No, honestly, I really am a glutton and I am not proud of it and pray regularly for deliverance from this one of the seven deadly sins. In the meantime, I am vulnerable to the promises

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