Sunday Worship8, 9:30 & 11 am
We’ve all heard that E=mc2. I’m not a physicist, so I won’t pretend to understand how mass and speed come together to make energy or how energy divided by speed becomes mass or however that works. I was probably sitting at a piano when I should have been studying for a science test. I managed, at least, to rattle off for a test that the E in the equation stands for “energy.”
So what does the E in ELCA stand for?
This past weekend our Confirmation students visited two other local congregations as a way to explore how other Christian denominations speak, sing, and pray in worship. Saturday afternoon they attended mass St. Maximilian Kolbe Parish and Sunday morning joined our neighbors for worship at Lakota Hills Baptist Church.
Pastor Lowell caught up with a few of our youth after the visit and asked them to reflect on their experiences.
I didn’t expect to find myself putting together a crib on Monday afternoon. My work day was almost over when I saw Pastor Lowell dashing from one part of the building to another, trying to prepare for Family Promise guests to arrive for their second day. A new family would be coming – one who was new to Family Promise and had an 18-month old and a 6-month old to care for.
Thanks to IKEA’s online assembly instructions, we finished the crib just as families began to arrive for the day. Kathy and Maddie Wagonfield were putting the finishing touches on dinner and Jenny Smith greeted several children and a few adults as they came in from a day of work, school, and job interviews.
Each Sunday there are several times during worship when a rubric indicates “A Brief Silence for Reflection” or some similar phrase. It is meant to be a time for us to prepare to pray, but the brief silence can be uncomfortable for us. Some of us fidget. Sometimes someone jumps into the next prayer before the worship leader starts it.
With all of our technology, it is rare to find a quiet moment. If you walk or run, you probably put some headphones in and listen to music. When you get home, you might turn on the TV. If you’re like me, you don’t even go to bed without some sort of intentional noise in the background to drown out ... what? Creaky house noises? My own thoughts? What is it about the quiet time that makes us squirm?
Moving is exhausting. Planning and packing and tying up loose ends and organizing and loading and transporting from one space to another depletes every last ounce of energy. On top of physical fatigue, the emotional toll is also great. Extensive farewells to people and place can bring deep grief. Life as we know it is changing.
If you are a fan of Tex-Mex cooking, few things are as delicious as a plate of sizzling fajitas. En route, you can hear them pop and crack and then whap! – your senses are overwhelmed by the sight and smell of the blackened iron skillet set down before you.
The memory that children have always surprises me! Some can name for you every U.S. president; others can tell you every kind of dinosaur. For me, I could quote some of my favorite movies from start to finish with ease. I don’t know where that gift of memory went, but I know it’s long gone. I suppose that, as one gets older, memory becomes more about recalling passwords, pin numbers, and parental carpooling schedules. After all, much like a computer, our brains only have so much room to store information. So, as the more pressing day-to-day concerns begin to pile up, we slowly lose storage space for holding information like the schedule for Saturday morning cartoons.