I am so incredibly impressed with the Parkland, Florida students' response to last week's horrific gun violence at their school. Check that. It is not the response that is incredibly impressive; it is the students. They are immensely impressive. Their responses to the murders around them are a manifestation -- a demonstration -- of the …
Tag: Woodridge UMC youth
On message
What lessons are our young people learning from us? In what ways are we teaching and sharing the messages they receive? That video has been making the rounds across the interwebs lately. It's an incredible performance and a stark reminder that our children and youth are extremely perceptive and they see and hear things we …
Sleep Out Saturday
Gonna try live blogging Sleep Out Saturday. Haven't done that before so bear with me... 2:00pm Home preparing to go on a bike ride with our kids. Being away from them is the hardest part of any overnight youth event. In the next day or two, I'll share more SOS insights from WUMC teenagers in …
Building empathy, enabling community
"Stress. It was really stressful having to constantly compare prices and serving sizes. It took a lot longer than when I grocery shop with my mom." "I felt like people were watching us and judging us, because we we talking so much about the price of everything and the servings. I didn't like that." In …
Connections. It’s all about connections.
There was a lot to like about last weekend's Confirmation retreat. No, not everything was peachy. You can't throw 16 people who aren't used to spending that much time together into a fairly small space for 26 hours and expect nothing but sunshine and roses 🙂 We played a lot, and we snacked a lot, …
It’s not all bad
This has been a tough week: Ongoing war and atrocities in Iraq and Gaza. Robin Williams' suicide Shooting death of Mike Brown and all that followed (and continues to follow) in Ferguson, MO. Death, racism, oppression, violence, pain and despair are not hard to find. I'm going to talk about all of that as honestly …
SOS aftermath
We participate in Sleep Out Saturday to raise awareness about homelessness in DuPage County - and to raise funds to help end it. As I wrote recently (here and here), SOS is a way to be in solidarity with our homeless population. SOS creates visceral evidence that those who are homeless are included in that …
Sleep Out (in solidarity) Saturday
"Everybody belongs," I said on Sunday. That phrase comes from a teaching by Father Richard Rohr, but also, once again, calls to mind MLK's brilliant, under-valued recapitulation of the gospel: "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality... Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." Lots of ways to express that thought: We are …
Listen to Amos, #endhunger
“...Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” We read those inspiring, challenging words from the prophet Amos this past Sunday. It certainly is a beautiful image - justice, as strong as the tide rolling in yet as refreshing as a cool stream, coming for those in need. But for we …
All That I Can't Leave Unsaid 