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Receptivity and offering: And-ness

Lynne Baab • Wednesday May 11 2022

“The world we inhabit is full of splendor and misery, our fellow humans are brilliant and inspiring and selfish and vicious, and we ourselves are hopelessly motley, full of mixed motives and mixed feelings.” —Kathryn Schulz, a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the memoir “Lost & Found.”

Schulz describes the big and small losses she experienced in the pandemic and concludes:

“All these are examples of what I think of as the fundamental and-ness of life, the way it requires us to experience so many contradictory or unrelated things all at once. There’s no getting away from this and-ness, because it is...

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Receptivity and offering: Tears

Lynne Baab • Wednesday May 4 2022

My husband Dave and I have been talking about the growing number of times we get tears in our eyes. We are both experiencing this as we get older.

Dave often tears up when singing hymns or praise songs at church, and when that happens, he feels okay about it because no one can see him in the pew. However, in our church we come forward to receive communion, and Dave often has tears on his face as he comes forward. He finds this embarrassing (and he gave me permission to write about this).

He says that his tears sometimes reflect sadness for...

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Receptivity and offering: My presence

Lynne Baab • Wednesday April 27 2022

“God, I am here. You are here. Amen.” Episcopal minister Debie Thomas describes a period in her life when those were the only words she could pray.

She writes, “I couldn’t say ‘thank you’ and mean it. I couldn’t say ‘help,’ because I was tired of asking for help. I didn’t feel capable of awe or reverence. The only honest prayer I could make was a prayer of bare-bones presence, mine and God’s.”

In an article in Christian Century, Rev. Thomas describes her journey from a place of discouragement and numbness to an experience of God’s goodness in each present moment. For her,...

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Receptivity and offering: The journey

Lynne Baab • Wednesday April 20 2022

I read, then re-read, a dialog a friend posted on Facebook. The author, John Roedel, wrote a book called Hey God. Hey John. What Happens When God Writes Back.This dialog between Roedel and God reminded me how often I focus on results rather than the journey, and how deeply I want the results to be good. Right now.

As I remember Jesus' resurrection and as I try to live in in the joy that he is alive and real and with me, I want to offer to Jesus my willingness to look for his hand in the journey of my life. I...

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