reverendjaneausten

All Hallows Eve  It has been far too long since I have been with dinosaurs and super heroes and gleaming dragons.   It has been far too long since I have been with any group of happy children— or their adults, who were having nearly as much fun. Community matters.   We can say it doesn’t, but it is hard to ignore the feeling that a night like tonight gives. God created us to thrive in community, and we have been like flowers with too little water and sunshine. Our Hallowe’en neighborhood Trick or Treat granted us two hours on the front porch engaging with humans and dogs and, well   neighbors.   We have stayed in respectfully distant contact with those on either side of us, but tonight had my first feeling of almost pre-pandemic relief and joy.   We are not there yet, I know.   And I am being as patient as I am able to be.   But because we were outside, and there was a crisp wind and encounters were less than 20 seconds, (albeit nearly 100 of the...

  It’s a beautiful, crisp, October day.   I am trying to write a homily for tomorrow, and all of the windows are open.   But all that I can manage to get onto paper is that there is nothing quite so distracting as a leaf blower at full volume.     FULL VOLUME.   This neighbor always wears his ear buds.   I have noise canceling ear phones on and they are not enough!   When it is coming from a neighbor, not only is the sound creating a major disturbance,   but the slippery sense of guilt also pervades.   “I should be doing that,” I fret. “When is the mulch going to get purchased, picked up and put down?”   Beneath our generous tree canopy, we have much non-turfed geography.   The leaves actually help with that, this time of year.   But today is supposed to be about writing because I can rarely get it finished before this Saturday moment in the week.   It is not my neighbor's fault.  Part of this is about the fact t...

    In the intervening time since my last post, I have been diligently pushing out a weekly column, From the Treehouse, for our church family.   That felt important during the Pandemic at its isolating height, but now we have returned to a crazier life, fraught with all of the anxiety Covid has brought, but missing the slower pace of the previous months.   I have been advised that people are now too busy to read those sorts of things,—and if my own inbox is any witness, I absolutely get it. I have been pondering this culture of ‘both/and’ that has pervaded keeping a church going in these challenging times.   Many things have two sides.   Streaming our services means those immunocompromised folks in our parish family can still stay connected, which is something we absolutely desire.   But it also means that those who might choose to return to church in person instead select an easier route.   I imagine them staying home in their jammies, with coff...