Experiments in Minivan Christian Formation
Title: Experiments in Minivan Christian Formation, based on a true story
Title: Experiments in Minivan Christian Formation, based on a true story
As a dad of two daughters, I have a lot of feelings about today’s feast day for Mary and Martha of Bethany.
Today marks the feast of Joachim and Anne, the parents of Mary and the grandparents of Jesus. They don’t appear in canonical scriptures; lacking source material, generations of Christians have looked for them in themselves.
Terrified women share an experience with men they trust, but the men don’t believe them. They say the women are lying. One of these women in particular is publicly shamed and labeled with the slanderous reputation of being a prostitute.
Today our church celebrates the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist. It’s always been an interesting feast day for me. Typically feast days commemorate the entire lives of saints. They get a singular day to mark their births, the miracles and ministries they performed while alive, and ultimately their deaths.
Today, June 19, we remember Adelaide Teague Case, who died seventy-one years ago. “An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church” tells us that Dr. Case was “the first woman to be appointed to full professional rank in an Anglican seminary.” She was a theologian, librarian, professor, and writer, but she lived at a time before women could be ordained in the Episcopal Church.
This year I celebrated Easter at an auto show. In celebration of my godson’s 12th birthday, his parents surprised him with a trip to Washington’s annual car show and invited me to come along.
Listen, I’m not saying I once elevated a communion wafer with a robot arm. That would have been Inappropriate. People would be rightly concerned that such irreverence would cause Jesus to jump out of that wafer as fast as he jumped in.
Earlier this year, I met a friend for a remarkable lunch. A relatively new church goer, she had heard a sermon on the beatitudes and wanted to speak with me about whether we Christians were really serious about trying to live that out.
Sometimes I get into a parenting funk. Or really, a life funk. One of those seasons when there are too many demands on time and energy, too many nights punctuated by sleepless children, too many ills in the world reminding us that the kingdom of God is still super not yet here.