making space for creativity
Often when the topic of Holy Week and Easter come up during some other part of the year, my children look a little confused and ask what is Holy Week? Then when we prompt them that it’s when we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus, they suddenly have their little memories jogged. Then they…
Growing up, I had a pretty typical Easter basket experience: some plastic grass, some yellow peeps, some tiny chocolate eggs wrapped in foil, and jelly beans. I do remember one year we got these cute, fuzzy chicks that would cheep when you held them in your hand, leading my dad to explain how we were…
This year we needed to do our Ash Wednesday service at home a few days early. Between Valentine’s Day falling on Ash Wednesday, Wednesdays being our busiest days with my husband Evan having a late meeting at school, and our church having its Ash Wednesday service start after our kid’s bedtimes, it just made sense…
This is a liturgy we created as a family for the season of Advent. Originally, we created it for our Sunday home church practice when we couldn’t go to services because of COVID. (If you want to read more about how we did home church with a 5 and 2 year old you can read…
Like the children’s game, “Red Light, Green Light,” Pentecost Sunday can sneak up on you, a quick red week before the long green summer. Easter and Christmas are hard to miss: they each have month-long, purple-clad fasts culminating in vigils the night before to prepare our hearts and minds for the shining white and gold…
Last year, Holy Week at home with the kids was such a special time. And we are largely planning on doing the same things (You can read here a full description of what we did here: Holy Week with Toddlers), but this year I did want to try and do some Easter Vigil Readings. For…
The last of the warm Wisconsin breezes are bringing down the very first yellow ash leaves of Fall this week. All summer I’ve been trying to find the words to write about our local Anglican parish closing, to explain something so big and complicated, private and yet at the same time a deeply shared experience….
This past weekend for Pentecost Sunday, Jackson and I got to renew our baptismal vows while spending the weekend down in Illinois with my goddaughter Teresa and her family (Evan was in DC with his students). That is one of many wonderful things about the sacrament of baptism — several times a year as…
Yesterday was Christ the King Sunday. For Anglicans and Catholics, and anyone following the Revised Common Lectionary, it’s the last Sunday before Advent and the start of a new Church year. It’s a fairly new feast day, Pope Pius XI inaugurated it only in the 1925, and it joined the Revised Common Lectionary in…
This past weekend we drove down to Illinois for the third week in a row, this time for a wedding. It is, by my count, the 20th wedding Evan and I have attended together. The day we got engaged we went to a wedding, and every year since we’ve been witnessing the sacred vows…
The Fall of my Senior year in high school my dad announced that he was going to a service at an Orthodox Church 20 minutes away. He was not entirely sure it wasn’t all going to be in Russian. He came home delighted. It was in English, and it was beautiful. It was a…
It is Holy Wednesday, right in the middle of Holy Week, right before the great burst of waiting together that marks Maundy Thursday through Easter morn. It is a state of great anticipation. I can almost taste the coffee. I can almost feel the snow melt for good. I can almost feel the…
It is Lent. I want coffee. It is winter. I want spring. It is unsettled. I want routine. But here we are, at the tail-end of winter, at the very beginning of Lent, a week and half into the adventure of Wisconsin. There is sometime so very physical and embodied about Lent…
This weekend we drove home through the Blue Ridge mountains covered in melting snow. The sun set behind us, and a full moon rose in the rosy evening glow. It was quiet in the car. It was a weekend full of beauty and sadness. We met a new precious baby but also mourned…
The snow has been falling thick and fast in Maryland these past few days. The morning after the Christmas ball, Evan and I left for a hike with just a few flurries, and when we got back five inches had fallen. The woods were deserted except for a few birds and three bounding deer, and…