​by Jill Fandrich
I’ve been a Sunday School teacher off and on for most of my adult life. It’s a joy to watch children grow spiritually as we share bible stories, music, prayer, and a sense of wonder in worship and lessons. While I hope that I’ve played some role in the faith development of Westminster children, I know that the most important models of spirituality are their parents, grandparents, and family-- not “professional Christians.”

We often want experts to teach our children. Certainly, experts are needed when we want children to learn special skills like music, sports, or academics. But faith is not “taught.” It’s interwoven with our lives and a part of who we are, not a skill to be learned. But it does take some intentionality to share faith with children.

How to do this? It’s unrealistic to ask busy families to add more things to their already overscheduled lives. Family spirituality is not another thing to put on your To Do list. Instead, the goal is to see God’s presence in the sacred moments that are already part of our lives, and when you see these holy moments, acknowledge them, name them, and celebrate them.

Bedtime is a good place to start. This is often a time when families are winding down and sharing a few quiet moments before turning out the lights. Many parents develop bedtime rituals (songs, stories, and a goodnight kiss) to help children transition into sleep. This is a perfect time to recognize God’s presence. Traci Smith, in her book Faithful Families, suggests saying a brief blessing over a baby as he/she is laid in the crib each night. It takes seconds to say something like, “May God fill you with love, joy, and peace tonight, tomorrow, and all the days of your life. Amen” or even a very simple “God bless [child’s name]. Amen.” This habit, if said every night, becomes a regular practice for both parent and child, acknowledging God’s presence and power in their lives.

Bedtime is also a good time to share God’s stories. Almost all parents read to their children at night. Add a good bible storybook to your children’s bookshelves, and read from it on a regular basis. One of my favorites is Desmond Tutu’s Children of God Storybook Bible (the book we present to young families in our church). It emphasizes God’s will that people live together in peace, and features illustrations by artists from all over the world, making it inclusive and multi-cultural in portraying the people of God. An added benefit to reading bible stories to children is that parents learn these stories as well. Many adults are not familiar with the bible. A good bible storybook is a great way for parents to become familiar with the stories which shape our faith.

Look for other children’s books which portray God’s love too, and include them in your children’s libraries. Books like Global Babies (Global Fund for Children) or Whoever You Are(Mem Fox) show that all children are created in God’s image.  Love, compassion, and peace are themes of many children’s books.

Children love to look at pictures of their family. When looking through a scrapbook or walking by photos in your homes, point to a photo and say “God bless Grandma and Grandpa” or other family members. It’s a lovely way to remember the love of family and the love of God at the same time.

Gratitude is a spiritual practice to be shared with children. Be mindful of those moments throughout your day when you are thankful. Some are obvious—food at mealtimes, for instance. Try making a simple mealtime blessing a practice. Expand the gratitude to talking about how the food got to your table, and say “thank you, God” for farmers, truck drivers, warehouse workers, store employees, and whoever prepared your meal. In other moments (car rides, bed time, doing chores together, taking walks) talk about things for which you are grateful. Be mindful of the daily blessings we take for granted—our homes, our family, our jobs, our health, our friends—and name them out loud.

And finally, take your children to church. Children learn God is important if God is important to you. Find a church at which you feel at home and become a part of it.
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Be mindful of the holy moments which are already in your lives. Once you make it a habit to see them, you and your children will find God everywhere.

by Jill Fandrich
Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week. For 40 days, Christians have observed the season of Lent, a time of preparation for the celebration of Easter. Holy Week recalls the story of Jesus’ last week on earth, his death and resurrection.
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I teach Sunday School at my church, and every year I struggle with how to share the powerful stories of Holy Week and Easter with elementary age kids. This isn’t Christmas, with a baby in a manger and animals and shepherds and angels all nicely wrapped in a story full of light and hope and promise. Holy Week tells a disturbing story of betrayal, suffering, pain, and loss. How do you explain a crucifixion to a child? Yes, the Easter message is one of hope and resurrection, but even Jesus’ victory over death is a challenging concept for kids. To be honest, it’s a tough one for adults too.

Adding to the challenge is that kids rarely get to hear all the Holy Week stories, so the build-up to Easter is often disjointed and incomplete. Attendees at Palm Sunday worship will hear about Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, where he is greeted with crowds waving palm branches and shouting “Hosanna!” (rough translation “Hurray!”). The next Sunday is Easter, and churches will be filled with flowers and light and brass musicians and crowds of worshipers proclaiming “Hallelujah!” (rough translation “Rejoice!”). What happened in between to make Easter so special?

Many churches, including mine, offer services during Holy Week which recall the events of Jesus’ final days, thereby telling the whole story. Jesus’ last supper with his friends and followers is remembered on Maundy Thursday, so-named because the English word Maundy is derived from a Latin word which means “commandment.” At Jesus’ last meal with his friends, he gave them a new commandment to “love one another as I have loved you.” At Westminster, our Maundy Thursday service is combined with a meal (a potluck, in our case); the worship and fellowship are intertwined, just as they were at the last supper. We share communion by eating a meal together and also sharing bread and juice, following Jesus’ instruction to “Do this, remembering me.”

On Good Friday, several Auburn churches gather for a Tenebrae service (this year at Saints Peter and John Episcopal Church) which tells the story of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion through readings, music, and the extinguishing of lights, ending with worshipers leaving the church in silence and darkness to await the resurrection.

Only by experiencing the passion of Jesus’ final days does the joy of the Easter message make sense. Easter celebrates Jesus’ victory over death and therefore ours too. Attending mid-week Holy Week services helps children hear the whole story with others, in the love and security of their families and faith communities. Carolyn Brown, who has written several books about children and worship, advocates for children attending Holy Week services, saying, “Not only do they hear the whole story, but they hear it with the whole congregation. They sense the strong feelings around the stories and learn that these stories are very, very important to all the people gathered there.  So, they listen more intently and claim the stories as their own.” Being present on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, children can imagine themselves seated at the table or standing at the cross.

But is the story too hard for children? Jesus’ last days were filled with betrayal, loneliness, doubt, pain and violence. It’s not appropriate, in my opinion, to focus on the whipping, nails, crown of thorns, or the details of a horrible death by crucifixion.

But, the story of Jesus' suffering and death is not as unfamiliar to children as we may like to believe. Children know pain. Some know death. They know what it's like to feel lonely, to feel afraid, to feel bullied, to feel hurt. We need to tell the story in an age-appropriate way, describing how people were mean to Jesus and eventually hurt him, and how Jesus could have run away but he didn't because he loved people too much to abandon them. This story connects with children’s own pain and lets them know that they need not experience it alone. It’s a story that also tells them it does get better, that there is hope beyond pain, and that God doesn't abandon them in the dark but leads them to the light. That's a story every child longs for. And I suspect, every adult too. 

By Patrick D. Heery
 
This year, I made a New Year’s resolution to go to the gym at least three times every week. It seemed like a positive, but still not overly ambitious, goal. Do you want to know how many times I have been to the gym since New Year’s Day? Zero. I haven’t stepped foot in a gym. I have, on the other hand, eaten an inordinate amount of ice cream.
 
Apparently, 80 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail by February.
 
It’s not that we don’t desire change. Most of us want to live more faithfully, more purposefully, more joyfully. Most of us want to spend more time with our families, community, and God. And yet, it always seems to be an aspiration for the future. We say we’ll change—when we’re not so busy, when we don’t need to worry about bosses or paychecks or the losses that come with living.
 
The problem is that these changes seem to belong to a different world that’s just not here yet.
 
You hear preachers like me ask you to be selfless, to volunteer, to love your enemies, to pray and worship, to advocate justice and read Scripture, to honor Sabbath each week, and you think: yeah, that all sounds good, but I live in the real world, where I don’t have time or energy for all that; and even if I tried, the rest of the world would still go on being its busy, selfish, hurtful place.
 
With so much suffering, the truth is that the world of the cross can seem impossibly distant from the world of the resurrection.
 
Yet, the apostle Paul, in 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10, insists that the time for discipleship, for faith, for change, is now. “Now is the acceptable time,” says Paul. “Now is the day of salvation!” Not when things get better, but now.
 
This may seem like an odd message for Lent, when we spend 40 days waiting for Easter, waiting for the world to change.
 
But Lent isn’t about waiting for Easter. It’s about getting ready for Easter. It’s about living as if Easter is coming. It’s about cutting away the old world from our life—all the anxiety, all the busyness, all the materialism, all the ego and greed, all the divisions and hate, all the unbelief—and creating a life that looks like the kingdom of God. A unified life of peace, and love, and worship. A life devoted to caring for the least of these, to lifting up the orphan and the widow, the poor and the stranger. A life that recognizes in each moment the presence of God and proclaims that presence to the world.
 
Paul believes this is possible because, for Paul, the cross (that old world of death, of sin) and the resurrection (that new world of life, of salvation) are now linked. And the link is Jesus Christ. His sacrifice, his love, overcame the division. He climbed up on that cross and broke it—because he refused to live by its terms. He refused to condemn his enemies. He refused to hate. Refused the easy way out. Refused cynicism and despair. He choose to live like Easter was already upon him. And because he made that choice, he became the highway between this world and God’s.
 
If we wait till we feel different, till the world has changed, we will never become the people we want to be. The only way we get there is if we choose today to live like we belong to God’s kingdom now.
 
But here’s why this isn’t just another New Year’s resolution: regardless of what choice we make, Christ has already made that choice for us. We have already been claimed by God’s love, by this new and beautiful world we find so elusive. We’re not being asked to change our lives; we’re being asked to believe that God already has.
 
I hope that you believe, that you choose to live as if you are already a citizen of God’s new world. But the miracle is that, even if you don’t, even when the old world crowds in and claims dominion over you, God already sees you as the reconciled and beautiful child of God you want to be. God sees you this way, because God looks at you through Christ.
 
Lent is your chance to believe, and to know that even when you don’t believe, God still does.

by Jill Fandrich
The verse in Matthew says, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” At Westminster, we’ve flipped that around to say, “Where your heart is, there will your treasure be.” In other words, we devote our time, energy, and resources toward the things about which we are passionate. If something is important to us, as a church or as individuals, we invest in it.
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There are mission and service projects which we as a church support. But as we look around at our members, we see that they are active in the community in a wide variety of ways as well. Some work with children; others with the elderly. Some can balance a budget, some can write, some can sing, some can cook or bake, some can teach, some can knit or sew. But they all are doing God’s work.

To support and empower members to live out their faith in creative ways, my church established a mini-grant program called “Where Your Heart Is” grants. Members can apply for financial support for ministries which do God’s work in the community.

A great example of this new initiative is the revival of the children’s musical “The March of the Big-Eared Nasties.” Bob and Beverly Miller are long-time members of Westminster who, in addition to full-time careers, have been active in community theater. Bob is a singer and actor who has appeared in Auburn Players and Merry-Go-Round productions, and Bev is a writer who authored and produced the “Palpitations” fundraisers for Auburn Hospital. Together they wrote a number of children’s productions, including “The March of the Big-Eared Nasties.”

“Nasties” was written in 1994 in response to a planned neo-Nazi rally in downtown Auburn. As word spread of the rally, Auburnians planned how to respond, holding assemblies and vigils to celebrate diversity. On the day of the rally, 25 out-of-town neo-Nazis arrived to find they were vastly out-numbered by a large crowd of counter-demonstrators, and the neo-Nazis made a hasty retreat without holding their march. The Millers wrote "Nasties" to help Auburn’s families remember the lessons that were learned from this event, that love is stronger than hate. 

Their play takes place in the mythical village of Friendlytown, where big-eared and small-eared people live together in peace. Some “big-eared nasties,” who believe in Big-Ear Supremacy, plan a march in Friendlytown. The main character of the play is Earnest, a boy with one small ear and one big ear. He and the Friendlytown villagers bring the conflict to peaceful resolution by holding a Parade of Love, inviting the Nasties to join them. 
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A poem by Edwin Markham inspired Beverly to include this imagery in the play: "He drew a circle that shut me out- Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle and took him in!" 
 
The challenge for Bob and Bev was to write a children’s show about a serious topic in a way that was not frightening to children. By making the conflict between big-eared people and small-eared people, they could show the absurdity of bigotry in a non-scary way. “Can you imagine anything as silly as judging someone by the size of their ears?” Bev said, and included this line in the play by the town Wise Woman Minerva Lou:  "Next thing you know, they'll be judging people by the shape of their eyes, or the color of their skin!"
 
The Millers decided to revive the play as they watched last fall’s news of the violent neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, VA.  Bev said, “The attempt by neo-Nazis to spread a hate-filled message in a peaceful college community was uncannily similar to the abortive Nazi march in Auburn in 1993. Sadly, it seems that lessons learned in the past need to be re-learned in today’s world.”
 
That’s where Westminster came in. Bev and Bob recruited some other church members, and asked the church to sponsor the production. Because its message fits so perfectly with Westminster’s inclusive Welcome Statement, it was enthusiastically approved. A “Where Your Heart Is” grant underwrote the financial costs, and rehearsals took place at the church. In order to take the play out into the community, the actual performances are January 28 at Euterpe Hall in Auburn and February 3 at the Morgan Opera House in Aurora.

God’s work takes many forms, including teaching children, through musical theater, how to love others.

by Audrey McNally

​I have always been a singer, and my earliest memories of singing are connected with the church. When I was a preschooler, my mother taught me to belt out popular 1950s songs such as “A: You’re Adorable,” which I would unabashedly perform for everyone at church suppers.
Growing up as a member of “old” Westminster Presbyterian Church on Delevan Street and later the “new” Westminster at its present location, I graduated from children’s choir to junior choir and eventually to “senior” choir (which, ironically, was open for anyone who was at least in the seventh grade). I have had more choral directors than I can easily name, but each and every one has contributed to my understanding and appreciation of the choral experience, as well as to my faith development.
Choral singing provides many benefits to the individual, both physically and psychologically. Various medical studies have shown that choral singing can strengthen feelings of togetherness, regulate heart rate, reduce stress levels and depression, improve symptoms of Parkinson’s and lung disease, enhance feelings of social well-being and even increase life expectancy. Stacy Horn, author of the singer’s memoir “Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness Singing With Others,” stated: “As long as I’m singing, it’s as if I’m inhabiting another reality. I become temporarily suspended in a world where everything bad is bearable, and everything good feels possible."
Many experts acknowledge the existence of an even more spiritual element. Robert Shaw, a renowned choral conductor, wrote: “The basic premise of music-making is unity — and unanimity — and, in its nonliturgical sense, communion.” Most of the music I perform (or, in church-speak, we prefer the phrase “offer to the glory of God” rather than “perform”) is of the sacred, as opposed to the secular, variety. This genre includes hymns, anthems, gospel tunes, choral introits and responses, and Latin Masses (including requiems).
Sacred music is an important part of every church service, and members of the choir are worship leaders as they proclaim the gospel of Christ through song. At Westminster Church, our very talented organist/music director, Lori Rhodes-Pettit, chooses every choral selection with great care in accordance with the lectionary readings of the day. Therefore, singing music related to the theme of the day helps one to internalize it, often with profound feeling, and to share God’s message of hope and salvation.
Through my membership in the MasterWorks Chorale of Central New York, I am afforded the opportunity to sing great choral masterpieces such as Handel’s "Messiah," Mozart’s "Requiem" or Mendelssohn’s "Elijah." There is great satisfaction in singing these often challenging works, as well as a feeling of awe for the sheer power of the music to inspire both singers and listeners. Although I enjoy singing secular music, such as Broadway tunes or movie soundtrack hits, it is the sacred music that touches my heart and feeds my soul. Ephesians 5:18-19 tells us to “be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts."
Regardless of your religion or belief system, singing with others can elevate your spirit, boost your confidence and widen your circle of friends. If you are considering joining a choral group, the new year is an opportune time to take on a new, self-enhancing activity. Westminster Church (and most churches) welcomes new choir members almost anytime, and MasterWorks Chorale holds two “open rehearsals” for prospective singers in January (this year on Jan. 2 and 9). For more information regarding these choral groups, visit westminsterauburn.org or masterworkscny.org.
Audrey McNally is a lifelong member and current ruling elder of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Auburn, where she moderates the worship committee. She sings in the Westminster Choir and MasterWorks Chorale.

by Patrick David Heery
This Christmas Eve, members of Westminster Presbyterian Church will gather at the Salvation Army Miracle Kitchen to host a special dinner for more than 100 of our neighbors. Together, we will enjoy a warm meal, share gifts and laughter, make new friendships, and sing carols. We will gather in the conviction that we are one community, one family—and that no brother or sister should have to go hungry.

Westminster, like many of the area churches, volunteers regularly at the Salvation Army. I admit, however, that when we first learned that we were scheduled to prepare and serve a meal on Christmas Eve, some of us were skeptical. Christmas Eve? Really? As if we didn’t have enough to do on that day already!

But honestly, where else should we be on Christmas Eve but a soup kitchen?

As a pastor, I of course hope that we will take time to go to church and worship God (Westminster will still have its regular services). But if we go there on Christmas Eve, looking for Christ, we may be in the wrong place. If we want to hear the angels sing—just as they did to the shepherds so many years ago—we’ll need to find the places where people have lost hope and have gathered in the dark.

If Christ chose to be born in such a politically conflicted, impoverished, and alienated space as the rural hills of ancient Palestine, then he would likely look far beyond the walls of the church for his birthplace today. Oh, Christ would eventually show up to church, just as he was later found there as a boy, talking with the teachers, in what he called his “father’s house.” But maybe, we should stop going to church to find God, and start going to church to worship the God whom we have already found in the hurting places of the world.

Janet Wolf, director of the Children’s Defense Fund Haley Farm, says that’s what her brought church in 1976 to a maximum-security prison for its Christmas Eve service. She admits she wasn’t much excited about the idea either.

Suddenly divorced, a single parent, raising two kids and holding down three part-time jobs, she had found that she wasn’t welcome at her former, large, suburban church. The pastor had told her that she could no longer teach Sunday school or hold a leadership position because she was not “an acceptable role model.” She had been devastated until she found a new church, located in the inner-city, where people mostly wore jeans and T-shirts and happily and lovingly welcomed her and her sons.

It was this little church that took her to a nearby prison on Christmas Eve. But when they got there, they discovered that it was on lock-down and they would not be able to enter. So there they were, a small group huddling together, standing in the sleet and snow, in a prison parking lot, bound to wake up sick the next morning, and all she could think of were her old church’s warm Christmas services with candles, trumpets, and carols.

The group tried lighting the Christ candle, but the wind kept blowing it out. Janet then read from Isaiah: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light… on them, light has shined.” Suddenly, one of her sons tugged on her coat and said, “Mama, look!” As she turned and looked up, she saw rows and rows of flickering lights in the prison. In window after window, in cell after cell, she saw the glow of matches and lighters, their light spilling through the bars. Together, with the men in the prison, they all began to sing “Silent Night.”

Janet says, “This was where I realized that I had missed what the gospel was about and what it meant to be a church.”

We too can trust that, on Christmas Eve, Christ will be born once again into the world. But it probably won’t be in a church.

Christ will be born in the prison down the street, in Chapel House among the homeless, in Auburn Community Hospital, and I suspect at the Salvation Army Miracle Kitchen. Christ will be born in the hearts of those who didn’t think they’d be welcome at church. Christ will be born in every poor and unloved part of our lives and world.

I hope we will run there with glee, just as those smelly, rough-mannered, beautiful shepherds did 2,000 years ago.

by Jill Fandrich
           
 “Sending thoughts and prayers to [fill in the blank]”.
            I see these words all the time lately. Following every natural disaster or unnatural tragedy, my Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of posts like these.
            I admit to a certain amount of cynicism about these posts. They remind me of a cartoon which depicts a drowning man yelling “Help!” and a man on the dock calling back “My thoughts and prayers are with you.”
            You’re probably wondering why someone writing a church column would be anti-prayer. I’m not. Prayer is an important part of a life of faith. It is perfectly appropriate to turn to God when one is overwhelmed or in despair or grieving. We pray in times of joy or awe as well. Ann Lamott in her book Help, Thanks, Wowsays that all prayers fall into three categories—supplication (help), gratitude (thanks), and awe (wow). When faced with tragedies like hurricanes, fires, shootings, and hatred, sometimes all one can say is “God, please help.”
            As a kid, I knelt by my bed and prayed every night, starting with the Lord’s Prayer, followed by a long list of asking God to bless family, friends, pets, and others. I learned to pray by bowing my head and closing my eyes. As I matured, my prayers changed, becoming more a sense of awareness of God’s presence as I went about my day. Now I pray with my eyes open and my feet on the ground. I believe that prayer is transformative, but it is more about changing me than it is about changing others or the situation around me.
            “Thoughts and prayers,” then, are how we focus our awareness on a person or a problem or a situation. But it doesn’t stop there. Awareness leads to empathy and compassion. Prayers help us see God’s presence in our lives and in the lives of others.
            From compassion, the next step is action. What does God call us to do in response to our prayers? Are we asking God for action, or asking God for help in knowing how to act ourselves? 
            We are exploring this at my church. Every year, we focus on a theme to help us grow in our faith and to discern where God is calling us as individuals and as a faith community. Last year, we explored “Where your heart is.” We shared those things about which we are most passionate, the things which touch our hearts. We found that as a community, we are concerned  about social justice, God’s good earth (especially our lakes), arts and music, children and youth, education, refugee resettlement, and the full inclusion and embrace of all people.
            This year, we move from caring to doing. How can we actually make a difference for the people and things about which we feel most strongly? After listening to our hearts, how do we put our hands to work?  
          This year’s theme is “You are Christ’s hands.” It is based on a quote from Theresa of Avila: “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” 
           Some respond in big ways. I have friends who are already planning trips to Texas or Florida to work on recovery efforts. Others might not be able to rebuild a house in another state but they work on Habitat for Humanity homes here in Auburn. We can give money to recovery efforts or donate clothes, furniture or household items to local homeless programs. We can visit the sick, deliver meals, write cards. We can start with small steps, and keep taking them.           
           The quote by Theresa of Avila inspires me to move personally from “thoughts and prayers” to putting my hands to work. Prayer is transformational. It is a start. It starts with caring, and moves to doing.  It changes me, so that I can bring change for others.  
 

by Jill Fandrich
I remember my mother’s last few years as a blur. I was her sole family caregiver as her health declined with heart disease and dementia, and I also was working and had three kids at home. As her care needs changed over her last 5 years, she moved from her home to an apartment to an adult home to a nursing home, where she eventually died of heart failure. In addition to all these moves were frequent trips to doctors, labs, specialists, treatments, and hospitals. I arranged for assistance from a team of caregivers who helped with meals, transportation, and companionship, especially while I was at work.  
Although I consider myself a reasonably competent person in many ways, health care is not one of my skill sets. When my mom started down the long, slow slide of failing health, I had no idea what to do.

So, I reached out. I called the Office of the Aging, talked to her doctors, and pulled together all the information I could about services in the area. Although helpful, it wasn’t enough. The best advice came from friends. Friends could tell me what to expect, give me names and numbers of trustworthy companions and aides, and give me honest opinions about doctors and facilities based on their own experiences. They could suggest questions to ask and provide a listening ear when I was overwhelmed. They were my safety net. They provided me with the support I needed to love and care for my mom until her final breath.
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Not long after Mom died, I found myself becoming a resource for others. I got calls from friends whose parents were declining, asking about my experience and looking for advice about caregivers, living options, and how to keep all the balls in the air. I shared what I could. I still have many friends today who are trying to navigate the strange and sometimes scary world of “parenting their parents.” Sadly, the landscape is more complex than ever now. The need for information and support is great.

One friend’s mother suffers from severe pain, for which doctors can give no diagnosis. They run from appointment to appointment with specialist after specialist, only to get conflicting (and often condescending) advice. Another friend cared for her parents in their home while their health declined in different ways, one mentally and one physically. When home care became impossible and there were no facilities where they could be together, she moved one into a nursing home and one into an adult home, breaking both her heart and her pocketbook (over $18,000 a month!). Another friend struggles with how to convince her father to give up driving, concerned over his and others’ safety and also his loss of independence and dignity. Another weighs the merits of moving her mother from her hometown to Auburn, which would take her away from her friends and familiar surroundings but bring her closer to family. Still another faces daily guilt over the choices she has to make; if she has dinner with her mother, she misses her son’s soccer game; if she can’t take time off from work (again!), she has to miss her mom’s doctor’s appointment. Common in all these frustrating and heart-wrenching situations are love and compassion for the parents who are dear to us, and sincere desire to do what’s best for all concerned, while also juggling the demands of work, family, and other responsibilities.

Recognizing the value in being part of a caring community, my church is starting a new conversation circle (a sort of support group) this fall for “children” of aging parents. This group will allow children of aging parents the opportunity to get together for confidential conversation, to share experiences and information, to be listening ears for each other, and to support each other through what can be overwhelming and emotional times. The group will meet on the fourth Tuesdays of each month at 7:00 pm, in Westminster Church’s social room at 17 William Street. Meetings are free and open to all. The first meeting will be September 26. The groups will be informal, but conversation will be facilitated. The intent is not to provide expert advice, but rather to help each other love and care for aging parents.  
 

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by Patrick David Heery
For nearly five years, once every month on a Saturday morning in Louisville (where I used to live), I wiped the sleep from my eyes, grabbed my hiking gear, and met up with a small group of people hungry for God’s voice. Crushed by the noise of work and life and by the chatter of our minds, we went to the woods to see if we could find there some sanctuary, built of oak and pond and bird song. Beginning with a devotional—perhaps a Mary Oliver poem or a Psalm—we walked in silence, doing our best to listen. To listen not only to the crunch of leaves beneath our boots or to the low hum of the frogs, but also to some word we required that day, a buried word that might heal or unsettle or even, perhaps, commission.

Every time, I felt a rare buoyancy come over me, like a door being opened and a burden lifted.

Ann Deibert, co-pastor of Central Presbyterian Church in Louisville, began these contemplative group hikes as a spiritual discipline, while she was studying for her doctorate in spiritual care. I was hooked the moment my foot hit the path. It was everything I wanted: God, nature, physical exercise, quiet, and friendship. My wife and I can track our relationship by those hikes—the very first hike was one of our earliest dates. Soon I became a co-leader of the hikes, partnering with the Sierra Club, a grassroots environmental and hiking organization.

That partnership created a truly ecumenical, and even interfaith, experience, bringing together Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, and Protestants of all stripes—as well as those who identify as spiritual but not religious (people who crave a deeper connection but may be skeptical of the institutions built around that connection).

The result admittedly wasn’t always profound. Sometimes it was just really cold or rainy. Often I’d end up thinking about the day’s agenda or how best to avoid the protruding roots on the path. And yet, through it all, friendships were formed, vulnerabilities were shared, and people generally left with a bigger smile than they had arrived with. One woman walked in prayer for her son and his struggle with addiction. Another was grieving the death of his brother. Most of us were just glad for the fresh air and good earth.

I’ll be honest, though: when that alarm first went off in the morning, I’d usually grumble, “I don’t want to go.” I would feel tired from the week, and doing something as radically different and intentional as hiking with others in meditative silence sounded exhausting. Combating the clutter with the noise of Netflix or Facebook always seemed so much easier.

Inevitably, I forced myself to go (just as many force themselves to go to worship on Sunday morning). And each time—as a testament to my inability to learn—I was surprised by just how free, rested, and energized I felt. God’s grace always found me there in the woods, sliding the burdens from my shoulders.

All that I ever needed to do, it turns out, was just go. God took care of the rest. It’s true Sunday morning. And it’s true for these hikes.

This month, you’ll have a chance to go too. Westminster Presbyterian Church will now be offering monthly contemplative hikes for anyone who wants to get outdoors, find a break from the commotion of life, and reconnect with their body and soul. It’s perfect for the churchgoer longing for a deeper spiritual life—and for the person who is wary of church and formal worship but is looking for something more in their lives.

Our first hike will be Saturday, August 19, from 10 am to 12 pm, at Fillmore Glen State Park in Moravia. Anyone is welcome to join us. Spending part of the hike in silence and part in conversation, we’ll find renewal as we become more mindful of our bodies, our thoughts, and the soil beneath our feet. There is no cost (besides the park entrance fee). RSVP is required, and you can reach out to me at 315-253-3331 or pastor@westminsterauburn.org.
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Trust me. We do not pull ourselves out of bed and sacrifice the noise in order to live reduced lives. We choose the silence so that we can live fuller lives. To quote poet Wendell Berry, “Best of any song is bird song in the quiet, but first you must have the quiet.” The same is true for God’s song.