Dear Friends,
Did all semi-Evangelical 90s kids grow up with Precious Moments figurines? I don’t know, but growing up in my family, they were everywhere in a particular zeitgeist-y way that seemed to fade out before my sisters were born many years later. My grandmother displayed them, sharing spaces with Hummel figurines, and I was devastated when the giraffe in my Precious Moments birthday train fell, snapping his neck. I don’t remember if we ever found a replacement, but I remember looking, peering into the cases at the local card shop, hoping to find one.
Why am I talking about perhaps the kitschiest possible Christian collectibles? They help me think about time better than most things, not so much because of the annual figurines but because of a book from the line, Precious Moments Through-the-Year Stories. They were dreadful! - and they were one of the only books I let my mother read to me past about age 6, besides longer Dr. Seuss stories like the Lorax, all of which is to say, that I’ve been thinking about what stories we tell and why.
I’m preparing to tell the Pentecost Godly Play story to my community in my first go at telling a story online, but I’m also looking at this week’s lectionary and Jesus’s statement that, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” I’m thinking about that heart shaped box that holds the Ten Commandments pieces.
Jesus commands us to love one another, to love the neighbor as ourselves, but he also gives us the Great Commission, to make disciples of all nations. I’m not interested in the colonialist nonsense behind that message’s interpretation, but it is the work we do in the classrooms, in these messages, in these relationships that we build through children’s and families ministries. It’s why we’re out here puzzling away at new solutions in this time of crisis. And to do that, we need to feed ourselves. For me, that means a lot of reading.
Right now I’m reading Rachel Held Evans’ Searching for Sunday, and before that, Sara Miles’ Take This Bread and Kate Bowler’s Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved. I’m also tuned into other newsletters, including:
Jeff Chu’s “Notes of a Make-Believe Farmer”
Nadia Bolz-Weber’s “The Corners”
I recommend all of these, and so much more. This week, I also recommend:
Look: for the signs of resurrection. We’ve still been skirting snow here in the Northeast, but the world really is coming back to life. I’m growing scallions from scrap ends in my kitchen. We can do more with less, whether we live in tiny apartments or have huge gardens to tend.
Prepare: I’m looking towards Pentecost. I’m working on the materials to talk about Pentecost, feeling excited about Illustrated Ministry’s Pentecost coloring page, and I’m hunkering down. The W. Mass Diocese of the Episcopal Church announced we would not begin moving back into community worship until at least after July 1st. This is where and how we worship and learn now.
Share: What conversations are you having at home and in reflection? Are you keeping a journal? Are you hearing or asking big questions? The comments are open. I’m journaling intermittently, thinking about St. Julian and how “all shall be well.” She wrote those words in the middle of a plague. We can write them again, in new ways, for ourselves.
Peace. All Shall Be Well -
A. Bird