This past Sunday was a double-header of sorts. When I was young and went to see baseball double headers, we called them “bargain bills.” I loved spending the day at two (count ‘em 2!) baseball games for the price of one. It made it worth the hours long trip to Cleveland or Pittsburgh. I also remember many memorable double features at the movie theatre in my hometown. When I later worked at the movie theatre in high school, double features were a lot less fun.

It is said that it is a curse to be living in “interesting times.” Curse or not, these interesting days we are living in certainly have a strong gravitational pull on our attention. It is hard not to find ourselves following one story after another about the invasion of Ukraine, the economic instability and food insecurity of so many in our world—including our nation, the current state of the virus around the world, and the health of democracy here and abroad. And we haven’t even gotten to sports yet!

A blessed Ash Wednesday to you all.

In this season of both Lent and war, I am reminded of the words of Christian educator and nun, Jane Marie Murry, who described the Christian life as a battle.

“What the Christian warfare means is giving up sin and building up ways of virtue in place of sin. This is not done without effort and a real struggle. Actually, for each person, it means mobilizing their energies and facing the enemy right on the front lines and battling there.

We all operate according to a calendar. We organize our days, weeks, and years in some way to keep track of them and give them meaning and importance. But we seldom have just one calendar. For example, “the” calendar tells us it is Wednesday, February 23 today, almost the end of the shortest month. The sports calendar tells us that football season is over, soccer seasons will soon begin again, and March Madness is just around the corner. (The sports calendar, however, is not as helpful this year in telling us when Spring Training will start!) The Church calendar tells us it is almost Lent.

The seasons are beginning to change. More daylight and more moderate temperatures together indicate the transition from winter to spring. As a church, we find ourselves in the process of transitions as well. We are likewise transitioning from winter to spring, and giving winter its final due for the year by celebrating our “In the Bleak Midwinter” games on Saturday evening, February 26th at 7 pm. This will be an online gathering and details for this “can’t miss/don’t miss” event are below. I look forward to seeing you there.

Dear Friends,

I look forward to seeing you—at least some of you—in all three of your glorious dimensions this Sunday in worship. Our opening plans are listed below in this FYI and will be posted on our website. Being our first day back, we will proceed with caution, but hope to loosen our preventative measures as the numbers continue to decline. We hope to be back to our previous COVID practices soon. And pray that we might return to pre-COVID practices soon thereafter. Thank you all for your patience and understanding.

Dear Friends,

Growing up in northwestern Pennsylvania, one gets a distorted view of time and climate. First, growing up in the snow belt south and east of Lake Erie (think: Buffalo), you come to expect a typical winter to include sub-zero temperatures and measuring snow falls by the foot. You also trust that the people forecasting the weather know more about the future than you do so you can plan. But they do not know as much about it as a groundhog in Punxsutauney, about 2 hours due south of my childhood home. Of course, many years and a movie later, Punxsutawney Phil’s fearless prognostications are an international event. So, a happy Groundhog Day to you all. I hope to have our Groundhog Day cards unpacked by next year’s holiday. But for now enjoy, what Phil predicts will be six more weeks of winter.

This Sunday we hold our church’s Annual Business Meeting. For me, this event brings to mind words like polis, polity, and even politics; because our church’s business is about being the people of God. And that takes all of us. Let me explain. Polis is a term that is often translated as “city” but actually referred to the admirative and religious center of a city, and later referred to the people under the authority of the polis. Polity is a term that came much later based on polis, referring to an organization creating the rules of life together. We often refer to a church’s polity as the way it organizes itself or its policies. Politics, before it was a negative term, referred to the way people related to each other within the policies of a community. In the end, it is all about people. People who care for one another and care for their common task.

Dear Friends,

It is already past the midpoint of January; we are well into the year 2021 2022. (It takes me a while to get used to writing or typing the new year!) Yet much of what has defined the past two years seems to be with us at the start of this new one. And of course, that has to do with the ongoing presence of the coronavirus in our world, found both near and far.

Dear Friends,

It is already past the midpoint of January; we are well into the year 2021 2022. (It takes me a while to get used to writing or typing the new year!) Yet much of what has defined the past two years seems to be with us at the start of this new one. And of course, that has to do with the ongoing presence of the coronavirus in our world, found both near and far.