“When you belong to this church family, the family you belong to is bigger than just this church.” That’s how I start out every new members class I teach at First Presbyterian Church of Dunn in North Carolina. I then point to the wall of portraits of the pastors who have served this congregation before me. “Sid Batts, he’s now at First Presbyterian Church of Greensboro,” I say. “David Sherrod is at Barbecue Presbyterian Church over in Sanford. David Bailey has been at a church in South Carolina. These pastors haven’t left us. They just now serve our sister churches, because when you belong to this church family, you belong to a family bigger than just this church.” To me, the most blessed quality of Presbyterianism is our sense of connection to one another. Whether you call it the communion of saints, the great cloud of witnesses or the blessed tie that binds our hearts in Christian love, for me, Presbyterianism has always included deep sense of belonging to a greater faith community … [Read more...]

“From dust you were formed and to dust you will return” It was Ash Wednesday, and the crowd was small since it was also Valentine’s Day.  I was also about five months pregnant, and had that in the back of my mind as I reminded everyone of their baptism and their death at the same time.  As part of my meditation, I reflected on Nadia Bolz-Weber’s story about Ash Wednesday, “If our lives were a long piece of fabric with our baptism on one end and our funeral on another, and we don’t know the distance between the two, then Ash Wednesday is a time when that fabric is pinched in the middle and the ends are held up so that our baptism in the past and our funeral in the future meet.”  It was a reminder that God is with us; nothing can separate us from God. Seventeen people had just died in Parkland, Florida, so that was in the back of my mind too as I placed ashes on everybody’s foreheads.  “From dust you were formed and to dust you will return.” Nothing can separate us from God — even … [Read more...]

Dear Mary Eliza and Teddy, You know that mommy is a pastor and you have seen me in my robe. Especially you, Mary Eliza, since you’re the big 5 and go to worship with Daddy every week. You’ve even seen my different colored stoles. The green ones from my ordination and trip to the Middle East. The white, a gift from MaJa and Poppy. The purple, a gift from granddaddy. The red that has music notes and reminds me of Grammy. But what you probably don’t know, or remember, is that when I was pregnant with each of you, there came a time I couldn’t fit into my regular robe. It simply wouldn’t zip over the bumps that were you. So my sweet friend Laura loaned me her extra robe, a special robe that had been a gift to her. She mailed it to me, all the way from Texas. I was the first to wear it while pregnant, but after some other pregnant friends had used it and I had gotten it a second time while pregnant with Teddy, we began to call it, “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Robe”. A sisterhood is … [Read more...]

The first Geneva robes, with their billowy sleeves and pleats, were stitched together with men in mind. These days their construction makes perfect sense to double as a maternity robe. This is what I told Mary Kathleen over the phone. Mary Kathleen and I were catching up, as we did at least monthly since seminary. Today our conversation centered on the robe she would wear as her pregnancy progressed. The robes that we wore each Sunday were made with clergywomen in mind. They were beautiful and feminine. While they worked well most of the time, there was no room for a pregnant stomach. But I had an idea. In my closet hung a robe passed down to me as a seminary intern. It was black with all the looks of a traditional Geneva-style robe. Full sleeves and gathered material that mimicked the look of academic garb. This would be perfect for a pregnant pastor with room for a growing womb. So, I boxed up the robe and sent it from Texas to North Carolina to live with Mary Kathleen while … [Read more...]