Welcome To My Office
Back & Better Than Ever
Where Ya Been, Bird?
When Wiggles & Wonder went on hiatus in March, I was simply too fatigued to continue being present with you all. And it wasn’t just the deep exhaustion of a year of pandemic living that was getting me down. No, by that point I’d had COVID-19 twice. I was dealing with lung problems and struggling with anemia. I couldn’t take on a single thing more.
Well… Welcome To My Office!
What a difference 8 months makes -
About two weeks ago, I accepted the position of Sunday School Director at St. John the Evangelist in Hingham, Mass. My life is in transit in the near term and being relocated for 2022. My health has re-stabilized (modern medicine is a miracle, time and again, our doctors are workers filled with God-given insight and brilliance). And, vitally, because of my improved health, I get to do what I love full-time.
So, this week the newsletter isn’t quite back at full content capacity. Instead, it is an update. A hello, I’m back, and I’m excited to be with you all again.
Until next week, a few things:
Glenys Nellist, one of the most delightful Christian children’s book authors of this moment, has been busy. Don’t miss her recently released children’s Bible “I Wonder: Exploring God’s Grand Story” and her new book for Advent, “Twas the Season of Advent” – you don’t be disappointed!
I was recently blessed to attend Virginia Theological Seminary’s Symposium on the Spirituality of Children, through their Center for Lifelong Learning, with Godly Play’s creator Jerome Berryman as the Keynote speaker (and I was one of the breakout group moderators!). It was a great experience, and while we can’t time travel back to it, you can still share in all the wisdom from the speakers asynchronously via their conference recordings - access to these is definitely worth the investment.
Not that the grown-ups won’t love Glenys Nellist’s book – you totally will! – but between Rachel Held Evans’ posthumous “Wholehearted Faith,” completed with the help of the wonderful Jeff Chu, and Kate Bowler’s “No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear),” my own long-form reading list if plenty busy.
As we emerge from the great Triduum of All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints, and All Souls and into the last few Sundays after Pentecost, may we be mindful of those who went before us, who made the hard work we are doing now possible. We gained too many Saints of the Faith in these past eighteen months. I begin my new work with joy, but also with anxiety and sobriety as I look upon this reality. I Wonder how we can honor these Saints in our work?
With joy, that I walk with you all,
A. Bird