A couple of weeks ago I took some vacation time and went to help my middle son move out of his apartment in Amherst, Massachusetts.  After the furniture was gone, my job--just as my father had done for me--was to sweep all the remaining detritus into the center of each room, remove the change and other small keepsakes, then sweep it again and again until the pile was gone.  It was just short of three years since we moved him in.  He and his girlfriend were trying out living together while they wrapped up their college courses.  Three years later, it is time to move on. 

They are dividing their time between her mom's house back in MetroWest and our house in Farley.  There are still a couple of rooms worth of furniture on the porch.  In fact, I had to collect some of it from the lawn during yesterday's tornado warning.  Life feels like a tornado sometimes. I worry about them and about all of us as we watch the dismantling of what our society once was.  Every day is a hard choice.

Of course, transitions are part of life and we are all forced to be relatively mobile, or at least flexible.  I looked back at what I was writing in 2022 when we moved the boy in.  His big brother was on the AT, finding his own path after COVID. His younger brother was in high school, finally "in person". My posts back then were already filled with questions about the future of The Eliot Church where I served. Maybe not all of the membership understood that, but the signs were there. We could feel the changes in our bones then.  We feel it now, too.

In the American psyche there is this idea of a "home town" where people live their whole lives and where things never change. It isn't real. Maybe a few people manage to stay in the same place, but...they themselves change. They adapt to stay there, even if they don't think they do.  The place they call home changes, too. Heraclitus was right.  We don't step in the same river more than once.  Life rolls on. We can acknowledge the change. We can prepare for it. It is stressful, of course. That said, there are rewards that come with traveling downstream.

These days, though, so many Americans prefer denial. These folks tell stories that demonize the seeming "new thing" and that celebrates a comic-book past. Many of the problems of today are because of this denial. Living a life of openness is the only real way to go.

A couple of days after moving my middle child out of his apartment in Amherst, we moved our youngest to campus.  He transferred from UMaine to UMass this year seeking a better fit. This year the commute from home was much shorter. He also kept his job at a grocery store near his dorm. However...it is still a change. The flow of life is teaching him, too.

We are nesting a bit. This week we went to the Franklin County Fair in Greenfield.  The fairgrounds are just up the hill from 2nd Church where I serve. I love fairs.  I have been going to them all my life.  Each one is unique, but so much of it was familiar, too. I was never a midway person. I spent my time in the agricultural section like I always have. The county fair draws all kinds of people who these days would never rub shoulders otherwise. We don't have many places like it. Do we talk to each other? Not really.  However, we do have to see each other at least...

Anyway, it was a step toward making space in a new place. All this moving and changing over the past three years has been a lot. It would be good to get settled a bit in this landscape we know through hiking, but that we have never inhabited for an extended period of time. 

​The fall has arrived and so we mark the time. Yes, technically one day is like the next and nothing really begins or ends exactly. School is in, but it only ended recently.  The new church year begins on September 14, but we were in church on September 7th. Still...we have to stop and take stock sometimes. These "beginnings" in the ongoing and interconnected stream of life are like the mountains we climb. At the top is the view of where we have been and where we have yet to go. The pause is worth it, I think. Then...we move on. 

After church yesterday we went to see a new friend sing at a local brewery.  It has already become a "local" for us. We humans are good at building patterns. Some of those patterns can help us make a home in a new place, or accept new people to our old places. We stay connected through the story of how we got there and where we are going. These are good instincts to have. May we always operate in this way when we can, fighting back the fear of the new. If we do, we can see what glorious opportunities await.

I am just starting to see the change of colors on the mountain this week.  It comes off as a spectrum of green, mostly.  However, recently it has been a fairly uniform wall, like a hedge that has grown well out of proportion.  Now it is noticeably more diverse. Up on the ledge the various hardwoods are slowly turning to their cold-weather state. The fluffy darker pines continue as if nothing is happening.

​No doubt species will have something to do with what our impending palette will be.  I suspect there are roughly equal numbers of sugar and red maples, for example.  There are also oak and ash.  Maybe there are a few birches too.  Each will have its own way of going about the change of seasons.  Also, some are on rock shelves that I can see from the porch. For others the soil or water may be more plentiful.  I know from my own explorations that there are a few small drainage streams wending their way to the Millers.  Their mini-biomes seem rich to my untrained eye. 

Anyway, I have noticed the trees noticing the beginning of the transitional season of fall. The weather is colder, too...just a little.  It even rained this week!  Most of the grasses are still very dead.  Yet one can have hope for August and September.  It has been nice not to mow...but only in a way.  I am very busy with church and family and don't mind dropping a task.  That said, it does feel strange.  The earth is changing in ways that seem obvious to some and less to others.

During the heat wave and drought, I put together a new composter.  The house came with one of those black vertical barrels featuring a small door at the bottom.  The critters figured it out well before I got here.  I "upgraded" to a rotating one, which may buy me some time.  Realistically, though, it is also a stopgap.  In the end I will be building a keyhole garden...hopefully in September.  Then I will fill it with leaves, vegetable bits, and finished compost over the winter. Then I will plant it out in the spring. 

This makes sense to me. Both the old and the new composters I have now are built for the suburbs. I don't really live there anymore. You have to accept that there is more wildlife than domestic and they will have their way. I would have just gone straight to some other plan but I don't have the time. The problem is that there are still stumps to pull where the keyhole bed will go.  One can only move so fast...

Thinking about compost has been a good exercise.  The magic of transforming "waste" into "fertility" preaches without my help.  I feel it.  The old and battered and used gets--not discarded but--stored in a sort of dark, warm sabbath container.  Then out of that rolling barrel--or bin or dirt pile--something new comes of it.  That new thing, though is very different.  A handful of finished compost derived from pounds of kitchen scraps, leaves, and newspaper is more altered than a caterpillar emerging from its cocoon a butterfly.  I think compost is a better metaphor for the transformation many of us look for.  We settle for butterfly. Who doesn't celebrate when we manage it! Still, compost is the harbinger of the new thing.  We change not so much to alter ourselves but to alter the world, right?

Anyway, that is all for now.  I am looking forward to the changes, seasonal, agricultural, and otherwise. Who know what will come of us or the world?  We shall see.  Let's do our best to make the location wherever we end up into a fertile place.

I got a shipment of pamphlets this week.  They are about $5 a piece and cover an array of garden and garden-adjacent pursuits.  You can order them here.  They have ebook versions of their entire catalog but I am a sucker for print.  Yes, it kills trees.  However, I am the sort of person who reads a book or article with a pen.  I underline.  I put stars and exclamation points in the margin so I can find the good bits again.  Sometimes I write myself notes arguing or affirming certain assertions.  I have an "ereader", which does its best to replicate that experience...but I am not that good at it.  Therefore, my wife--who reads more and more widely than I do--and I also have a library that is more extensive than it needs to be.

I actually do fine "online" with some newer books and essays, particularly if I am reading strictly for enjoyment.  Yet an old book or a new book for work--which is frequently about old books--is best in its analog form. So, too, are pamphlets.  The form has an ancient history and certain early works--Common Sense comes to mind along with the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers--had demonstrable world-wide influence. The Epistles are a kind of pamphlet. They are still around, it seems.

Before making decisions about crops and planting in general, I will be consulting the internet.  Youtube has taught me so much over the years.  That said, I will be using these as well.  They have a no-nonsense quality in conveying specific information.  Yet somehow they are engaging more generally.  I have already started underlining and "conversing" with a few of them.  

The process is quite pleasurable, actually. As with any art form that stacks words on each other to generate meaning, a pamphlet needs a good writer.  Knowledge of the subject is important.  So, too, is knowledge of the reader. None of this knowledge is useful if the writer doesn't know how to arrange words into compelling sentences. There are only 32 pages in a Storey County Wisdom Bulletin. For me to be brought along, every word has to do its job.

My favorite as of right now is All the Onions by Betty Jacobs.  By the end I felt like I knew some things. That is the goal.  I also felt a certain confident engagement in the subject, one that I am already interested in.  Jacobs loves onions. She feels I should love them, too.  For the record, I have chives and "walking onions" (Jacobs calls them "Egyptian Onions" but they are the same thing).  Now I am ready to branch out to a breed less perennial.  The question is which one.

Also high on the list is Great Grapes by Annie Proulx.  Yes...that would be Shipping News, Brokeback Mountain, Fen, Bog, and Swamp Annie Proulx.  One can add Great Grapes to her masterful works along with a couple pamphlets on apple cider.  Great Grapes gave me pause, though.  One thing she managed to efficiently convey is that--great as they are--grapes are also a lot of work.

I think I partly like pamphlets because they are just nice to have.  They have texture.  They have a smell.  They have a reason to exist that serves a clear purpose in society.  Also, they hearken back to the long tradition of informational writing.  I like that, too.  It is a form far greater than what comes in our IKEA boxes. My grandfather--who was a farmer and gardener among other things--had publications like these. Sometimes, after a hard day at the office, he found pleasure in figuring out what was wrong with the knot-tying mechanism on the hay baler, or how to properly bring back his own grandfather's apple trees.  

​As the world gets faster, we start looking for things that slow us down.  These pamphlets are part of that connection. Younger generations, tired of their phones and the meaninglessness of life's tasks are now looking to these early things. Nostalgia hits us all.  At its most toxic it manifests as MAGA, white supremacy, and the romantic (and untruthful) retelling of history.  There is a way, though, to look to the past not to replicate it, but to draw from it lessons and life-patterns that might make our own time more fulfilling.  These pamphlets are a way to reach back with an old form, but the content can reflect our needs and motivations today.

I am a preacher on Sundays.  With this in mind I have always taken an interest in another old form.  The sermon isn't exactly like the informational garden pamphlets.  It has more in common with the works of Tom Paine.  Still, there is a form and structure to a piece.  One only has so many pages. A sermon can go very much awry without boundaries and guides to get from beginning to end.  I use a few different forms and modes depending on the subject and how the congregation "listens" to it.  Sometimes those forms are explicit.  More frequently I use them without thinking.  Then when I look back I see the pattern that makes it cogent. 

I am learning a new congregation these days so I am thinking about this a lot.  Maybe that is why I find myself working through a collection of sermons by Jonathan Edwards. There are a number of famous figures by that fairly common name.  Of course this John Edwards is not the famously narcissistic politician derailed by a scandal that seems quaint today. Nor is it the underappreciated folk singer of the 1960's and 1970's who I saw opening for Arlo Guthrie a couple of times when I was a child.  This is the Jonathan Edwards,  a Congregationalist lion of the pulpit back before the revolution. He is also the sort of Pioneer Valley resident who might be the answer on an AP US History exam.  That gives him something in common with Daniel Shays, among others.

Much of Edwards' theology is very old fashioned today.  After all, his biggest hit--also possibly on an AP test--is Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. The reason I am reading his sermons has more to do with structure rather than theology. He was considered one of the great public speakers of any era.  Some of the passages still sing.  The way he preached continues to influence how we do the same thing today.  His church is still just down the river. I don't have to dig too deep to see his influence.

One of the styles in a modern preacher's arsenal is the "three point" sermon. Not everyone likes to admit it...but it is still in use.  There are many variations, of course, but the idea is simple or "Puritan Plain";  There is a topic.  You say three related or escalating things about that topic.  Then you wrap it up. Edwards, who gave himself way more time for a sermon, has at least three little points for each of his three main points!  When taken as a whole, it can sound plodding today. 

Still, the framework is interesting.  It is old.  He also inspired his listeners who didn't mind sitting for hours in those pews. Studying his sermons today helps to see how both the form and theology has changed and how it hasn't. It connects us to our past--both beautiful and ugly--and it gives us a way forward that is hopefully both contemporary and traditional.

The sermon is an old thing worth keeping.  The content changes.  It has to be adjusted for new ideas and new ways of being.  However, it should be on that list of artisanal old-school media that can give something to the modern (or post-modern) person. Like the pamphlet, they also have a reason to exist that serves a clear purpose in society...or they can if we preachers are able to shift the lens to point to what is now than what we wish for in a mythological past.

I used to tell my interns that preachers are like blacksmiths.  There are fewer of us now. Both our art and our reason for existing has changed somewhat.  Still, we are here.  We are cooler than you think. We are--or can be--a part of someone's reaching back and reinterpretation of hand-made days.

About a week ago I got my car back from the body shop.  I had two claims on it.  The first was from January.  When I realized that I would probably have to change churches after 22 years it made me a bit distracted.  I survived the Advent/Christmas insanity by focusing on work and, of course, on the actual holiday itself.  However, When the new year began there was nothing to distract me from the massive changes ahead.  Anyway, in a state of general overwhelm I managed to gently back my car into a metal barrier at a local gas station, damaging a rear door while leaving the barrier blissfully unaware.  After the "accident" I didn't have the spoons to get it fixed, so I spent six months driving with a slight dent, a blue streak on the door, and a piece of trim flapping in the breeze.

The second claim was a gift from my son, who was raised in the 'burbs with a mailbox screwed to the house.  He backed the car over the regular old rural delivery mailbox at our new home, surgically removing the car's bumper.  That was much more recent, of course, and the proverbial straw that forced me to do something.  He has been distracted, too.  We all have.  However we are settled in to our new place in Franklin County.  I have a month under my belt at 2nd Church of Greenfield.  We are moving on.  Life is fine.

Allison and I even got to go for a hike last weekend!  That was a fun return to normal.  We live in a valley along the Millers River with trail heads pretty much everywhere.  It was just a walk in the "neighborhood" that I would describe further but...we are supposed to keep hiking traffic down thanks to the presence of a VERY popular rock-climbing site.  Its popularity can create a few bottlenecks for hikers, climbers, and residents alike.  Suffice it to say...if you know, you know.  If you would also like to know...just email me.  Everyone involved is very friendly, just also concerned about the ecosystem.

The hike itself was short and lovely.  There was a classic Massachusetts hiking view.  No great snowy or craggy peaks...only a gentle hill across the river and just a hint of Watatic to our east if you risked your life on the ledge to see it.

​We need to get back in shape after a long hiatus of life interfering.  Al's dissertation still lurks but the "search and call" is behind us.  Getting back out will be a slow process, but a pleasant one.

One thing I have been thinking about lately is how location can change a person.  I feel like I am in the process of becoming at a rate that feels unusual to me.  In Natick I wasn't stagnant by a long shot.  However, now I am moving among different people, with a very different congregation.  I have been pushed spiritually, socially, and physically. Also I am back living in the country.  For the most part I have only visited it for the last two decades. Before that, it was just life.  Now the re-entry is...interesting. Nature is overwhelming here--or feels like it.  There always seems to be a reason to head outside. I am planting a small garden now and planning for the springs of '26 and '27. I am always discovering mysteries in the soil and beds that I am now responsible for.

When I get out of work I come home, put on a different sort of work clothes, and then move brush, or fix the mailbox, or plant the flowers and the vegetables...or perform any number of tasks for the slightly-falling-down house that was built in the late 19th Century.  I am trying to remember the skills I was taught by my grandfather starting 40 years ago and ending a quarter century ago. Then I will read up on whatever needs reading up on.  Then I will do more church work and hang out with the family. 

​I will no doubt write more on this at some point.  For now I am trying to enjoy the ride and the different sort of busyness.  We shall see where we end up in the end.  However, I am happy with the new start.

I don't know why I did it, but I grossly underestimated the amount of time and energy it would take to go into search, conclude a search, and work through the many complications of moving, buying a house, ending a ministry, and starting another one.  So in my ignorance I signed up for courses and workshops.  Early in the year they worked out well.  I took a course on non-profit administration, for example.  I felt I would need those more "secular" skills if I stayed at Eliot and worked part time somewhere else.  I highly recommend it if you are from Massachusetts and don't mind the occasional drive to Framingham.  However, this was early in my process and part of the process.

I also signed up for some courses and trainings in the area of ecology and religion.  I do this sometimes when I am stressed out.  Learning something that is separate from the chaos is fulfilling and useful for the future.  However...in this case I had to back away.  Before I did, though, I managed to complete an assignment in which I wrote a "Psalm" about the county where I am moving.  It made sense to focus my energy there since we were heading out for house-hunting, candidating, and other meetings.  Anyway, here it is.  I didn't finish the course but I recommend it. I also recommend the platform for people who are interested in the study of religion...

I haven't posted here since October.  It isn't that I didn't have things to say!  It is just that there has been a lot going on.  Also, at sensitive times in an institution like the church, it is important not to over speak.  My last post was about the Eliot Church downsizing their staff and what that meant for me.  A great deal was pretty open-ended back then, but now there has been quite a bit of resolution.

Long story short...I am moving. I went into search while looking at part-time options that would have kept me in Natick.  In the end, I accepted a full-time position as Pastor at the Second Congregational Church of Greenfield Massachusetts.  I am in the process of buying a house in Franklin County.  Allison and I (and to greater or lesser extent the boys) are leaving Natick after over twenty-one years.

This has been a whole process, of course.  Which no doubt I will reflect on when the time is right.  However, I wanted to get back into the habit of blogging and--now that there is some certainly around future and current roles--this seemed to be a good time.

One of the trickiest parts of this transition is saying "goodbye" and then saying "hello".  Part of both processes involve boundaries.  In the ministry there are rules about when, where and how we interact with former congregants.  These rules loosen up a bit over time but right now they are in effect.  That is OK.  When we live our lives in the church we try to promote healthy relationships both when we arrive and when we leave.  Here is the newsletter column I posted for the Eliot Church about how the goodbyes will go through the last few weeks of my time at Eliot and for the next year at least...

 I Just got back from a vacation I sort of backed into.  Over the summer we thought it would be fun to go do some hiking and sight-seeing in Ireland for a couple weeks.  We did the preliminary planning and took the time off. We got people to commit to preaching at the church in my stead. Then...we didn't go. Life got complicated.

Still, we had the time so we went up to Maine for a week and visited family.  We saw my sister and brother-in-law's new house.  We checked in with my mom.  We stayed with my brother and sister-in-law.  We stumped around the part of the state where I grew up. We caught a friend's book-launch and poetry reading. Then we also hiked, ticking off visits to the Camden Hills and to Gulf Hagas.  It was a restful trip that I would love to post about some time in the future. However, that is not what I am up to today. Instead I want to touch briefly on developments in my church.

You see, for years we have been talking about the future of churches in the United States.  I have written about it, talked about it, and preached about it numerous times. In that broader context I and others have set the life of our specific congregation. Things have been hard for the modernist institutions we think of when we hear the word "church".  Progressive or conservative, they come with buildings which are often too large for their needs.  They come with a struggling staff in desperate need of retraining and revisioning. They come with programs--like Sunday School--that are much less popular now. They come with the perception of arbitrary judgement which--while not as common as people think--still holds true in many places. The post-modern world has caught up to us.  Congregations--progressive ones anyway--are adapting...but slowly.

 While religion may just be fine, our old institutions may not be. They must change and learn in order to grow.

All of this is to say that The Eliot Church, where I have served for twenty-one years and two months, will be cutting the pastoral position from full-time to half-time starting no later than September 2025. It gives us as a congregation time to plan for what that will look like.  It gives me a year to figure out what I will be doing for the rest of my career. It feels like a long period, but it isn't really.  We are adapting to the new reality--churches must be more flexible, more creative, and more stable ​going forward--but we are still an old and venerable institution. Pastors also need to be these things but I, of course, am older, too.  I am glad we are facing the current reality, even though there will be some hard traveling both for the congregation and for me.

I don't think it is time to dwell on the details.  These will come in time and I will probably post some of what I witness and learn here on Sabbath Walks. However, on our way up to Gulf Hagas we happened to drive past my first church settlement.  I was 1/3 time but they shortly re-connected with another congregation who hired me for 2/3 time. This gave me the same "uneven yoke" that my predecessor had.  Both of those churches are still there, surviving in the face of all the difficulties that this era brings to voluntary associations. Seeing the old parish was a good reminder that life goes on, as does love.  It reminded me that God does not abandon us. We just need to make sense both in and to the society and culture that needs our message.

We have made a big step.  I do not know what it means for me or my family.  I do not really know what it means for the congregation.  What I do know is that we are acknowledging a change that leaves room for celebration as well as grief.

"Remember your baptism" is a popular phrase in my life.  My colleagues and I are urged to do so--and to encourage others to do so--every once in a while throughout the year.  There are good reasons for this, of course.  When we remember this moment in our lives, we recall our relationship with God.  We also recall our relationship with the holy people who gathered together to witness the moment.  At least some of those people are our family, or chosen family. Sometimes it is done in the midst of a congregation as well.  In my congregation on Ingathering Sunday we bring water from places that have been important to us.  Then we use it for baptisms and other things so the congregation is always there in spirit. A baptism doesn't need witnesses.  However, when they are present, they remember their baptisms, too.

Of course, many people don't literally remember.  They were infants at the time.  Also--after the baptism--some people have few opportunities to be reminded of it. Families don't attend worship like they used to. In the absence of anything other than a very occasional visit for Christmas Eve, more and more adults give little thought to their children's spiritual lives or their own. The ritual can be just a thing you do in those early days before other things take precedence.

I am not saying this as a complaint.  It is just a statement of fact.  In fact, I literally remember my baptism.  I was 18.  The reasons my parents decided to encourage me (along with my siblings) to be baptized were complicated. Neither we nor they attended church regularly.  However, even at the time I found it moving.  I had been hovering around the edges of my friends' churches for a while by then.  I had questions about life and its meaning and the people I met in church--while they didn't have answers--seemed to have a path.  Now I am a pastor and so is my mom.

During worship this past Sunday, I officiated a baptism for an adult who was formerly a member of the youth group. It reminded me of my own experience.  Before the service I told him that there would be times when it meant very little to him and times when it meant a great deal.  That is how these things work.  Baptism is one string that connects us in every direction to Creation.  We don't always notice it, even when we know it is there.  Then...we really do when we need that connection.

Baptism is a sacrament in the tradition I represent.  There is only one other.  That is communion.  The reasoning is that they are the only ones that appear in the Gospels.  John the Baptizer stood down by the river. Jesus sat in the upper room. Other traditions range from having no real sense of sacraments to having seven or nine.  Each tradition chooses different things as well. That is the richness of how we see God.  We are humans, the Divine speaks to us in a language we understand. We all have different "languages" that we speak.

We had communion on Sunday as well.  It was, in fact "World Communion Sunday," which is a celebration of diversity and ecumenism held on the first Sunday in October.  It is another opportunity to consider our spiritual connections.  At Eliot we pass the tray of bread cubes and little glasses through the pews.  We do this so we might serve each other in the process.  Also, it is a recognition of the divine spark within each of us.  Other congregations go to the front to break bread off a communal loaf or take a wafer from a priest.  Frequently there is a communal cup as well.  That we recognize each other in our diverse manifestations of ritual is important.  These are small differences that reflect the wide variety of roads we take toward God.

When I was first getting interested in the United Church of Christ, a UCC colleague asked me how I planned on dealing with participating in a more sacramental tradition.  I had spent some time as a Unitarian Universalist pastor where the word "sacrament" when it is used doesn't have the same weight.  She had also entered the UCC from a less sacramental tradition.  I didn't have an answer then and she didn't expect me to.  It was more of a "head's up" that I might want to start thinking about baptism and communion more seriously and systematically.

I am glad I took her warning. I have learned over the years that ritual can be built over differences in style and belief.  It creates common ground upon which we can sit and converse. We can see our commonality in the quest toward unknowable mysteries.  It also gives us a way to show our love both to God and the world.  Amen to that.

Yup.  Here is the last sermon of the series!  It was quite a trip which contributed to a bit of a work bottleneck and a couple life stressors that still haven't been cleaned up.  The great thing about nature is that in times of stress and chaos we can retreat to it, remembering our relative insignificance.  It is therapeutic and we all could use a little therapy these days...

So I started posting my "Learning From Nature" sermon series and then sort of fizzled out.  There was a big gap in the calendar between sermon #2 and sermon #3.  In there we had our Annual Meeting right after the church's "Winter Getaway" where we close the church and all head to New Hampshire together.  Then we had a guest preacher--Rev. Ciaran Osborne--for the beginning of Lent.  However, we have been back to it for a while.  Here is Sermon #3, "Let Us Not Despair."  The road to despair seems pretty short these days in many aspects of our lives.  It is important, however, to keep our eyes on the prize.  

Anyway...here it is...