January 10, 2021 | God’s Kitchen Table

Epiphany, January 3, 2021 | Joe Shares

December 27, 2020 | Those Who Dream: First Sunday of Christmas

December 13, 2020 | Those Who Dream: 3rd Sunday of Advent

December 6, 2020 | Those Who Dream: 2nd Sunday of Advent

Courtney and Reuben Sharing

Courtney Sharing

Reuben Sharing

November 29, 2020 | Those Who Dream: 1st Sunday of Advent

November 22, 2020 | Vera and Robert Sharing

November 15, 2020 | Drick Sermon

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November 1, 2020

October 25, 2020 | Tim Schellenberg

October 18, 2020 | Katie Tan Preaches Parable of the Talents | Sower

October 4, 2020 | Reflections on Sabbatical

September 27, 2020 | Poetry Sunday

God’s Grandeur

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS | shared by Sophia Gant

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

When I Am Among the Trees

BY MARY OLIVER | shared by Sherri Michalovic

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

The Layers

BY STANLEY KUNITZ | shared by Sheldon Rich

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

We Grow Accustomed to the Dark

BY EMILY DICKINSON | shared by Carol Martin Johnson

We grow accustomed to the Dark –
When light is put away –
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye –

A Moment – We uncertain step
For newness of the night –
Then – fit our Vision to the Dark –
And meet the Road – erect –

And so of larger – Darknesses –
Those Evenings of the Brain –
When not a Moon disclose a sign –
Or Star – come out – within –

The Bravest – grope a little –
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead –
But as they learn to see –

Either the Darkness alters –
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight –
And Life steps almost straight.

Ashes

BY ANGELINA HORST | shared by Angelina Horst
There is beauty, I say, in church bells
Hosannas sung, palms flung
by knee-high humans, in homes visited
meals shared, flowered clover given
by your father’s
other lover.
It’s been two years
since you started this poem
severed lines about tulips and divorce
of the ashes that come with Lent
of the ashes you wear year round.
Lent leads to palms leads to
crosses, draped in white, empty
promises of life
in a world burnt black,
barren.
There is beauty, I say, in church bells
Palm Sunday, flowered clover
repotted on your dinner table—
in a husband who loves you,
who rubs the back that hurts, vacuums the chores away,
but can’t undo the pain your parents left

like a tomb you need to open
and open and open again
each time hoping
the ashes will turn to palms,
Hosannas to a Savior,
a new story
green as clover.

September 20, 2020 | Mennonite World Conference & Peace