Faith, Grace, and Hope

I recently told my husband, "The world is coming to meet me." I was doing errands in Anchorage and I saw two people sitting in their cars and reading, while eating their lunch. Once upon a time, I was a lonely reading girl with glasses- no other bibliophiles or -phages and no other glasses-wearers. Now almost everyone my age uses some prescription lenses and everyone is in a book club or has a Kindle or is trying to read more. It took me a long time to be okay as a public reader, but on this eve of my 29th birthday, I will say, "My name is Julia and I like to read." I like to read more than anything else. Forget the new car smell, if I could buy an air freshener in "Musty Book Store" or "Library of Congress", I would. I keep a book list. I'm not the only one who does this. It's not uncommon. It's just that for many people who know me, I'm the only person they know who does this. Since 2002, I have had a goal of...

I was recently reading a back issue of The Lutheran and the cover article was about summer camp. Outdoor ministry is a big deal in the ELCA, but camp, in general, has probably been one of the top 3 spiritually formative forces in my life. My mom and I went to a mother/daughter overnight at Camp Mundo Vista (World View) in Sophia, NC when I was in third grade. I went there with other GAs (Girls in Action) for a week in the summers 1991, 1992 and 1993. In the summers of 1996 and 1997, I was a counselor there, with my lips pinched shut about my age because of how close it was to some of the campers. Being a counselor meant a week or so of staff training and then eight weeks or so of campers. For a dramatic and deeply faithful girl, CMV saved me from the cynicism of my fellow teens. CMW is sponsored by the Women's Missionary Union of North Carolina (the women's branch of the Southern Baptist Church- sort of). Since my family did not attend a Baptist church, I was asked not to me...

When I was listening to the Sermon Brainwave podcast today, I heard Prof. Matt Skinner say that "ordinary time" was his favorite time of the church year. He went on, "Without ordinary time, the rest of the church year is just nostalgia." It's true. Ordinary time is the space between Pentecost/Holy Trinity and Reformation/All Saints. Without this time, we would be caught up in the holiday cycle and constantly trying to outdo the year before or stuck in the "dazzle" of the festivals. In Wuthering Heights , Catherine tells Nelly, " My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods; time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath--a source of little visible delight, but necessary." Without getting into the plot of the book, I think of ordinary time like Heathcliff - it's not always pretty, but it's necessary. Our feelings about festivals can change beca...

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15 My husband and I keep stacks of snapshots around the house- some of Ivan and some of our son. Sometimes we flip through these stacks of Ivan at 3 months old, a roly-poly puppy and our son at 4, 5, 6 months old- a roly-poly baby. So cute, we say, look at that smile. I forgot this one, we coo, and point to the toy in the mouth, the ear flap, the food smeared from ear to ear. I suppose that I need to mention that we do this when they’re both awake, sometimes when they’re playing right in front of us. We just flip through the snapshots. We love both of them, but the snapshots don’t make any noise. They don’t smell. They don’t spit up on us or leave hair everywhere. The snapshots are quiet and very well-behaved. Looking at the pictures is relaxing, but it’s not really a relationship. Of course, we’d trade all the pictures in the minutes for the two critters in them. But sometimes it’s nice to have that frozen moment in...