Dear friends, Growing up in mid-century North Central Pennsylvania, people of color were few and far between.  I thought it was because they just didn’t live there, but I later learned that the KKK was meeting in the region where I grew up, and they may have encouraged persons participating in the Great Migration to just “move along.”   Still, my father was a devotee of Abraham Lincoln (and as he was a funeral director, learned most of what there was to know about Lincoln’s f

Dear friends, I read this poem at the end of my sermon last Sunday and several of you asked me for it, so here it is! Bruggemann captures so well the challenge of living faithfully and abiding in the Way of Jesus in the midst of our broken world. And I love the last line--may this year be for each one of us a time of "high hope" guided by the Holy Spirit! Peace and blessings, Nancy+ Epiphany  On Epiphany day,      we are still the people walking.      We are still people in

With what stillness at last you appear in the valley your first sunlight reaching down to touch the tips of a few high leaves that do not stir as though they had not noticed and did not know you at all then the voice of a dove calls from far away in itself to the hush of the morning so this is the sound of you here and now whether or not anyone hears it this is where we have come with our age our knowledge such as it is and our hopes such as they are invisible before us untou

by Thomas Hardy Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. “Now they are all on their knees,” An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! Yet, I feel, If someone said on Christmas Eve, “Come; see the oxen kneel, “In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood us

Beloved in Christ, Merry Christmas! I hope my message reaches you on this Christmas Day surrounded by love and loved ones. Now is the time for us to raise our voices in joy. The world is not perfect - far from it. But this is the world as it was when God came among us. This is the world that God chooses still. Today, we celebrate the One who came to live among us in order to perfect our faith. Today, we celebrate the presence of joy and the victory of love, even when joy and