Buttercups in Bloom

Last night I received a text from my mom ' be sure to look at the moon.' I was grateful that she reminded me to check out the super moon and all of this glory.  Looking at moons isn't new to us.  My parents encouraged me to spread my wings and so I left the nest to attend college 5 hours away from home in the deep south. I think college was where I first realized the fullness of racial tension.  I'd grown up being part of a school system that bussed their students across town to integrate students.  I'd been the minority for most of my school aged life.  I had been part of a community of friends that didn't see the color of anyone's skin, we didn't care which neighborhood you lived in or what kind of car you drove (we were just lucky to have a car at all to drive).  We danced together...we laughed together...we cried together.....we hated assignments together....we worked on homecoming floats together....we celebrated birthdays together....we stood u...

Orange, yellow, red and green surround me this evening. The second Saturday of the month always rolls around a bit quicker than I want. The second Saturday of every month is always filled with a dread of all the work that lie ahead and yet a joy of all that is to come. The second Saturday of every month I step into our church building and am in awe of the persons that fill the pews, hallways and second floor. Our building is filled with families from our county (depending on the data it's the poorest to the third poorest county in the state of Tennessee), students from a local private school, university students from a prestigious private school, professors from the university, retirees and their grandchildren that live within our community and members of Morton Memorial UMC. Every inch of our space is used...pallets of food, bags of produce, carts used to transport the food to the cars. Today I did not want to be there. I'm suffering with bronchitis and on any ...

I've been thinking about steps a great deal today. Currently my fitbit tells me that I've walked 13,642 steps since I put it on this morning just before breakfast. While I have been thinking about the physical steps that we've been taking each day today I was thinking about steps on a very different level. We began our morning sitting on the Southern Steps of the Temple Mount.  The steps are the steps that pilgrims from the southern end would have terversed in order to enter the top of the Temple Mount. The view is breathtaking.  But something happened on the steps this morning that bothered me and clung to me for the remainder of the day.  The four of us were sitting, reading our Bibles, walking through the reflection questions that I had crafted for this holy space and another large group came and seem to overtake the space without any regard for the time of prayer that we were having.  Sharing space isn't/was't the problem because here in the Land of the Ho...