Connected Streams

I am propped up in bed in a darkened hotel room, the rhythm of ocean waves finally having lulled my two little ones to sleep. My heart is so full, and I want to believe I'll take the time when I get home to record the reflections of this rare quiet moment, but I am too experienced. If not now, probably never. Since tomorrow will come soon, I will lead with headlines. Exposure Morgan has had no earth-shattering experiences this week. I have to be careful not to drive the boat on this one. I did ask a few times though, "What has it been like to be with so many other kids like you adopted from India?" Her reply is a standing refrain in recent months: "you wanted to hold me bad, mom, didn't you...when I was in India?"  "Yes, sweetheart."  " And their mom and dad wanted to hold them?" "Yes, they did." "Can we go swimming now pleeeease?" "Camp isn't over yet." "What's next?" ...

It is hard to know what is okay to share and what violates our children's privacy. In the world before blogging and social media, where would we share our hard-earned celebrations of promotions, won games, and first steps? Where would we seek solace when the dream hoped for was deferred or when a loved one was lost? My first thought is Sunday School. My second thought is around the table on Wednesday night. They call these dying pieces of the institutional church, but they are what I knew growing up, and they are what I have known at every church since. Faces of the Church - individual and corporate - appear before me as I revisit such pivotal moments too personal to even hint at. And it makes sense that this is where such sharing would occur. We rub shoulders with those who would shape us and with who would allow us to shape them in return. We are invested in one another. I find that some of the same does happen in the mega-room that blogging and social media allow even as I am ...

(2014) Yesterday, as we do every year on the Sunday closest to January 6th, the gathered body of Christ celebrated Epiphany. In Sunday School Brennan joined in a search for baby Jesus. Conveniently his arrival meant there were three boys available to make the trek and re-enact the legend of the three kings -- a tale derived from Matthew's account of wise men bringing three kinds of gifts to the infant king. The boys found the swaddled baby beneath a hanging star, interestingly back in the same classroom where they had begun their search. If you know the story, then you know that the wise men are warned in a dream not to return home the way they had come. Matthew says they left for their own country by a different road. *** I have tended to think of Epiphany as a sudden shining moment, illuminating what has been hidden, making clear what has been murky. Some truth exists in this, but I have come to realize that epiphany only becomes such when preceded by preparation and followed b...