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Sabbath Devotional :: Community
I think one of the most beautiful things about my faith tradition is the ways it embodies community. This week I was reading a social media post from a political/community organizer I follow who recently had a medical procedure, and they were mourning the lack of community in their life as they were dealing with their recovery and some of the limitations and hardships they were experiencing. I thought back to the many times my ward communities have shown up for me, from my ministering sisters bringing me dinner after I had a minor surgery a few years ago, to a bishopric member sending a thoughtful text to check in…
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The Power (and Covenant) of Community
Do you ever get words stuck in your head? Or notice a specific word or concept popping up over and over? These last few weeks, “community” keeps working its way into my thoughts. Being physically separated or isolated from our communities right now, not able to “meet together oft” (3 Nephi 18:22), has made me think a lot about the importance and power of community. A few weeks ago, I watched Just Mercy and noticed how this theme weaves its way through the storylines. For the inmates who are physically cut off from the outside world and for their families and friends and neighbors trying to band together against the injustices…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Knowing Christ Through Our Web of Community
In C.S. Lewis’ book “The Four Loves” there is an essay entitled “Friendship.” The following passage is a reflection on the loss of a member of Lewis’ close circle of friends: “In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets… In this, Friendship exhibits a glorious ‘nearness by resemblance’ to heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each of us has of God… The more…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Building a Zion Community
These are my four great-grandmothers — Gladys, Grace, Lucy, and Marie. I had the rare privilege of knowing all of them in this life. Their personalities were all very different from one another, but each was so strong and interesting in her own way. Recently, while working on some family history, I came across several photographs of these women at various family and community functions; a few even captured multiple grandmothers in the same photographs. Maybe for the first time, I began to give serious thought to how these women might have interacted with one another as peers in the community, long before I came along. I remembered that a…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Getting Acquainted
One of the things I love best about MWEG is our hope for a thoroughly integrated organization. We are intentionally not hierarchical. Whether as founders or occasional post readers, we each contribute to the sap that runs the system. In an effort to let you know a little about me, here is a quick sketch of my early years as a Mormon. My son Chase once described me as a “committed misfit” in the Church. I think he nailed it. I don’t fit the mold, but I’m here to stay. I was brand new to Mormondom in the early 1970’s. As a student at Wellesley College, I waited for two…
