When one of my children was five years old, they entered kindergarten. The child we entrusted to the school was a high energy, affectionate, interesting kid. A kid who “bounced,” just like A. A. Milne’s Tigger in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. A kid not always aware of their hyperactivity, nor…

One of the first things I did as a new religious educator in the mid-1980s was to get in contact with those who had been doing the work for years and had much to share. I lived for monthly meetings of the Mass Bay Religious Education Team. I would come home brim full of ideas, enthusiasm, and love…

In 1980, when President Jimmy Carter proclaimed the week of March 8 as National Women’s History Week (now Month), he said, “Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength and love of the women who built America…

By Andrea Arrington As a professor of African history, one of the first things I do with my classes is assess what they know—or think they know—about Africa. We discuss images in mainstream Western media and pop culture and identify problems in those presentations of Africa and Africans. We…

A wake-up call, according to the Urban Dictionary, is “when you’ve been doing something self-destructive for some time (perhaps without realizing it) before something serious happens that forces you to come to terms with what you’ve been doing and that you need to stop.” …

By Bart Frost My first congregational event as a brand new Director of Religious Education was an ordination. I was greeted with smiles, handshakes, and a keg sitting in a bucket of ice. This was my first professional gig and I had no idea about what the expectation was around drinking at…

Last fall, I shopped for owl-print clothing online. I waded through countless options until landing on a grey dress with a big white owl at the hem; a dress made of fabric of covered with bright blue owls, and pink pajamas printed with brown owls. Meanwhile, Amy Johnson, MSW, the United Church of…

Our attic needed to be emptied for an insulation project. We brought down boxes and boxes of clothing that had once belonged to our three grown children. It all needed to be sorted for saving, discarding, or recycling—a huge, overwhelming job that I intended to get through as quickly as possible.

Two weeks ago, I was part of an interfaith gathering where we asked one another, “What is weighing on you? What signs of hope are you finding? How do you see God’s spirit moving in the world?” One by one, people named the troubles that swirl around our communities and our world: racism,…