Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Carla Aday”
It’s hard to put my finger on “the one thing.” For me, it is more a flood of feelings, a series of small moments. They accumulate like layers of fertile soil. A hike up a rocky path in Nicaragua to a young friend’s home with dirt floors. A human sling …
Reading is not just for learning but can be a form of prayer, a spiritual practice.
Someone has said that in the US, the public swimming pools integrated faster than the baptistries. Over the first one hundred years of our congregation’s history, we periodically partnered with sister churches in the African American community. One frequent partner for pulpit exchanges, choir exchanges, book groups, dinner groups and …
Six days of work are spent To make a Sunday quiet That Sabbath may return. It comes in unconcern; We cannot earn or buy it. Suppose rest is not sent Or comes and goes unknown, The light, unseen, unshown. – Wendell Berry, This Day, Collected and New Sabbath Poems I’m …
Five years ago, I spent a long day at the hospital while my husband had surgery. Once Dave was settled in a private room and began slowly recovering from surgery, a church member showed up with Winstead’s burger and tots for my dinner. It was like bread from heaven.
Reporter Mary Louise Kelly was in Iraq on a Blackhawk helicopter when her son’s school called from the US to say that he was very sick and needed her to come quickly to pick him up. Every working parent knows this tension of needing to be two places at once. …
“My God my God why have you forsaken me?” This is Jesus’ question on Good Friday. As Jesus is nailed to the cross, abandoned by his friends, taunted by those he came to heal, feed, teach, he cries out in agony and despair from the cross, “My God My God why have you forsaken me?
Why did Noah build the ark? It was because of violence. God “saw that the earth was corrupt”. (Genesis 6:11) Noah built the ark and the flood came, and creation began anew.
“Things Seen and Unseen” is the title of a spiritual memoir by Nora Gallagher. That title has lingered with me for many years. Faith is about things seen and unseen.
They caressed her body and gently bathed her with water and lotion. It was one of the most intimate acts I had ever seen at the time of death. She was not yet 50 and had only been diagnosed with the brain tumor a few weeks prior. And now, she …
My office is on the first floor of the church. But up on the third floor in a small corner is a study where I like to hide away to write sermons. I have always loved that room, free of interruptions to think and pray and reflect. But three years …
My day begins with Wordle. If there is time, the crossword mini. Then a glance at three newspapers. And a peek at Instagram (mostly to spy on my son, but don’t tell him) where I sometimes get lost in the recipes and fashion advertisements. Then email and the day is …
In our rearview mirror sits Christmas, New Year’s, the Super Bowl and Valentine’s. And now the calendar turns to the season of Lent. Next week, on Ash Wednesday we kneel to receive ashes on our foreheads. Sometimes I dread Lent. It can feel like a smudge of gray paint muddying …
In his new book “Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life”, Professor Dacher Keltner describes the importance of “collective effervescence.”
I sometimes struggle when I write this column because I want it to be inspiring but I’m tempted to make it informational. I don’t want to bog us down in the weeds of church business and yet the church is the body of Christ and though it belongs to God …
