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Love Show Up – looking back on Easter

Love Shows Up and makes an impact! The gospel for this Sunday, April 28 is about Thomas, you remember, the one who ‘doubted’. He wanted to see the nail holes in Jesus’ hands before he believed. I often feel like him- wanting to make sure of the facts before putting my whole heart into something. Pastor Wally Gustav is going to preach at Holy Cross this week (Sunday at 9:30 am) about that story – I have the sunday off, but before I go, I want to talk about Easter – the first Sunday of Easter, April 21st at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Salem. We had a lot of people show up – with big smiles, and lots of kids! The kids sermon was at the chancel (the floor by the foot of the altar) so we could accomodate them all and Natalie Nyquest saved me by helping pass out things to the kids!  The kids were very interested in the stickers I brought!002 Continue reading “Love Show Up – looking back on Easter”

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Love Shows Up

Love Shows Up! – At Easter, in our lives, and we ought to pay attention. This week at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Salem, Oregon, we had Love Show up in a couple of ways – first some amazing young men from Blanchet (Catholic School here in Salem) showed up to add their artistic touches to our Garden!  The Garden is already wonderful – its a joint project of my church, and La Casita – the little house which is a ministry to our neighborhood here at the corner of Sunnyview and Lansing – it features a Thursday coffee time for local mothers and young children, as well as the amazing Garden which the La Casita ladies plant and maintain the last few years (Holy Cross planted it for a few years to start). We have Garden Club every summer in there for local kids, too. But these young men showed up and painted the Garden in such a wonderful, whimsical way! We are so pleased!IMG_3281 Continue reading “Love Shows Up”

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Education – a rising tide lifts all boats

Maybe one way we can change the world is through education.

Our ability to heed Christ’s call to love one another is dependent, in no small measure, on our ability to understand one another.  Understanding, in turn, requires education. More than a decade ago, Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Salem, Oregon began an endowment fund, in part, to foster educational opportunities for those connected to our church community.   We believe that education is more important than ever today, given the fractured and contentious world we live in where understanding and empathy seem to be in short supply. Continue reading “Education – a rising tide lifts all boats”

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Gethsemane

My husband Joe and I were in the Garden of Gethsemane in late January. The olive trees, gnarled and old, will stay with me for a long time. Our guide told us some olive trees live up to 2000 years. So, the olive trees we gazed upon that day are connected, somehow to the olive trees that Jesus was among on his last night with friends.  Continue reading “Gethsemane”

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Tragedy on all fronts

The memories come back for me, of four little girls killed in the bombing of a church, September 15, 1963, in Birmingham Alabama. I was a little girl, and yet I have a wisp of a memory. Years later I would watch the documentary https://www.amazon.com/4-Little-Girls-Spike-Lee/dp/B00KG2RCS0 and begin to get the facts straight in my own mind. These acts of burning traditionally black churches are designed I suppose to be an attack on the black community, and yet they seem to me nothing so noble, rather, they are simply acts of hatred. Continue reading “Tragedy on all fronts”