Pastor’s Blog

Midweek Devotion 3/25/2021

"THE POET THINKS ABOUT THE DONKEY" Mary Oliver On the outskirts of Jerusalem the donkey waited. Not especially brave, or filled with understanding, he stood and waited. How horses, turned out into the meadow, leap with delight! How doves, released from their cages,...

read more

Midweek Devotion 3/11/2021

KINDNESS Naomi Shihab Nye Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the...

read more

Midweek Devotion 3/3/2021

SABBATHS 1985, V Wendell Berry How long does it take to make the woods? As long as it takes to make the world. The woods is present as the world is, the presence of all its past and of all its time to come. It is always finished, it is always being made, the act of...

read more

Midweek Devotion 2/10/21

AN EXCERPT FROM "PARADISE," Toni Morrison An excerpt from Toni Morrison’s Paradise, formatted as a poem for your reading pleasure… Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a...

read more

Midweek Devotion 2/4/2021

  FROM "THE COLOR PURPLE," Alice Walker Listen, God love everything you love - and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration. You saying God vain? I ast. Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it...

read more

Midweek Devotion 1/27/2021

THE RED WING CHURCH TED KOOSER There’s a tractor in the doorway of a church in Red Wing, Nebraska, in a coat of mud and straw that drags the floor. A broken plow sprawls beggarlike behind it on some planks that make a sort of roadway up the steps. The steeple’s gone....

read more

Devotion 1/13/2021 – The image of God (and us)

Ephesians 2:10 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. DEVOTION Yesterday during Journey of Faith, we talked about faith... what it is and what it looks like. What it brings to our...

read more

Psalm 23 and more

I am looking at a message to share in some form on Sunday, and was sitting with the lectionary. How fitting, in some way that the Psalm reading this week is Psalm 23. It is one of those Psalms that most people can recite from memory, using the King James version. We...

read more

One year already?!?!

Yesterday was the first anniversary of my ordination and installation as the pastor of the Fairbanks Union and New Portland Community Churches, as well as the ED of MATE. A month before that actually celebrated the year that I have spent in this wonderful and new...

read more

Personal Statement of Faith

I believe in the Holy Triune God, revealed to us in nature, Scripture and history, but most of all through Jesus Christ. I believe in the Holy Triune God who still reveals himself to us through our own experience and remains active in the life of the church and...

read more