Elsa Anders Cook
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Pandemic Prayers for Proper 23
The President has the virus. In some capacity, we are all reacting to this. We are reacting to how he is responding to treatments. We are questioning our own faith as we try to summon prayers and compassion. Some of… Continue reading
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10 Things to Celebrate Your Pastor in Clergy Appreciation Month
October is Clergy Appreciation Month. While this celebration may have passed by along with International Buy a Priest a Beer Day on September 9th, it should be something we celebrate this year. We should find every reason possible to celebrate… Continue reading
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Stay-at-Home Clergy Mom
On Christmas Eve, my daughter raced back and forth from table to pew, pew to table and back again, to ask for more Jesus. That’s what she called it with both fistfuls full of leavened grace as her little hands… Continue reading
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Pandemic Prayers for Proper 21
It has been a bad week. Can we admit that? Can we conspire in that little bit of honesty? A lot of bad shit is happening. I’m not sorry for my language. I am mad and you’re probably mad too.… Continue reading
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Pandemic Prayers for World Communion Sunday
In the churches I’ve served, this was always a Sunday people looked forward to. It wasn’t a celebration that they remembered from childhood but it was something that has become meaningful and important. There was always careful planning to make… Continue reading
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Pandemic Prayers for Proper 20
It has been six months. I lost count. I could have sworn it had been longer since my husband redeployed from South Korea and we almost immediately cancelled the vacation I’d been looking forward to for nine months and went… Continue reading
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Small Pandemic Joys
It has been so long that this pandemic has gone on. I have lost count. I no longer care to count. I have yelled at my kids. I have been short. I have been unkind solely because I have been… Continue reading
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Pandemic Prayers for Proper 19
Though I didn’t do anything with the text last week, I’m still thinking about the question Kathryn Matthews posed in her weekly musings in the United Church of Christ’s Sermon Seeds about the grieving parents in the Passover story. How… Continue reading
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Pandemic Prayers for Labor Sunday
This weekend celebrates the end of summer. It is one of those American holidays that is celebrated with backyard BBQs and family gatherings before school starts (or at least that was my norm as a child in the Northeast) without… Continue reading
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Pandemic Prayers for Proper 17
In the past week, my clergy groups have been full of posts and comments about how tired you are. Not just because you’re working so hard, dear clergy, or even because you need a vacation. Though, I imagine, those add… Continue reading
