I've been thinking about...

...Giving.

Today we pick up the story of the Rich Young Ruler as our sermon text, and so I’ve been thinking a lot about giving, and all the things that we give. Money. Time. Love. Commitment. Talents. Prayers.

For whatever reason, I keep coming back to the start of Sharon Daloz Parks’ essay on Household Economics (you can find it in the excellent collection edited by Dorothy Bass called Practicing Our Faith). It starts like this:

Whatever the form of our household — an urban apartment, an upscale residence in the “burbs,” a farmhouse, a nursing home, a trailer, a brownstone, or the office where we find ourselves “living” — our homeplaces define basic ways of life. We count on the predictable motion of moving into, through, and from “our space.” The way we routinely approach our home and fumble for key or doorbell is coupled with a sometimes surprisingly fierce sense that it matters to us whether or not we have a Christmas tree in our window in December or candles on the table on Friday evening and food — indeed, the food we particularly like — in the fridge and cupboard. Home is where we let down and rest well — or fitfully. Home is where we figure out primary patterns of nurture and productivity, habits of need and desire, forms of rage and forgiveness, ways of “taking time” and discovering the people who “count” for us. Our households are anchoring places where, over time, we craft the practices by which we prosper or fail to prosper.

We pray that this place we call church, can be a home. A place of inspiration, spiritual practice, generosity, and love.

Yours in the journey, Rev. Brian