1/16/26
Dear Ones of Christ Church,
Last weekend in our worship we renewed our Baptismal promises together. One of those promises is to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being,” with God’s help.
This weekend, I invite you to join me in listening to and reading and praying with the words of our ancestor and exemplar in the Christian faith, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who dedicated his life to striving for justice and peace. Below are links to read, or listen to him reading, his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
It is a long letter—pray and listen or read in sections if it is too long for one sitting. Pray and listen or read in 15 minute segments each morning or afternoon or evening. Listen to the Rev. Dr. King’s voice and words on your commute. Or while you are cooking dinner. Or while you are sitting still or while you are walking.
As you read or listen: What do you notice? What resonates with you? What inspires you or gives you hope? What convicts you or makes you uncomfortable? What do you hear in the Rev. Dr. King’s letter that speaks into our present moment today? What difference does what you have read or heard make for you, and for us, in our lives of following Christ?
Yours in Christ,
Melissa+
Click here to listen to the Rev. Dr. King read his Letter From a Birmingham Jail
Click here for the full text of the Rev. Dr. King’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail
1/9/26
Dear Ones of Christ Church,
Many Epiphanytide blessings to you and yours. Last weekend in our worship services we blessed chalk for the Epiphany tradition of chalking a blessing on the entrances to the places we call home. Some of you have sent me photos of your blessed doors and stairs. These photos have heartened me. In these days when we are experiencing terrible violence and enmity in our nation, we bless our thresholds, renewing our Christian commitment to welcome Jesus as our guest and to share his hospitality with others. Blessed chalk and a guide for blessing are still available at church (on the hallway table in front of you as you enter from the office door). And for those who are spending this season away from Plymouth, you can chalk and bless your own thresholds by using the resource at this link.
This weekend in our worship services we will hear Matthew’s version of the story of Jesus’s Baptism by John in the River Jordan and renew our Baptismal vows as we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord.
Above is an icon of Jesus’s Baptism, by the Ukrainian icon writer Ivanka Demchuk. As you read and pray with Matthew’s account of the Baptism (Matthew 3:13-17), and/or as you pray and meditate with the icon, here are a few questions to ponder:
- What word or phrase in the passage, or what part of the image, catches your attention? How might God be using that word, phrase, or image to speak to you?
- What excites, inspires, or consoles you in the Scripture passage and/or icon? What challenges you or makes you uncomfortable?
- What difference does Jesus’s Baptism make for you, in your own life of discipleship?
Yours in Christ,
Melissa +
12/26/25
Dear Ones of Christ Church,
Blessed Christmas to you! Whether your Christmastide is filled with travel, hosting, or quiet solitude, I pray that you will seek and find God’s provision, peace, and new life, Christ’s light born to us and in us.
On this day between hearing the earthy story of the lowly manger in the Gospel of Luke and the expansive poetic prologue of the Gospel of John (which we will hear this Saturday and Sunday in our worship), I share with you the poem below, by Michael Longley. I love how the poem approaches the mystery of the Incarnation, in Jesus, where heaven and earth meet, through the Lukan scene of Mary and her baby, and the Johannine cosmic Christ.
Yours in Christ,
Melissa+
Birth
By Michael Longley
The cosmos-shaper has come down to earth:
Mary is counting his fingers and toes.
Source: The Candlelight Master (Wake Forest University Press, 2020), shared by Sara Kay Mooney, Christmas 2022.
12/19/25
Dear Ones of Christ Church,
As we enter these last days of Advent, I am increasingly aware of the practice of waiting. Waiting each morning for Rusty the rare over-wintering western hummingbird to come to our heated feeder (yes, for those who heard my sermon back in October that featured Rusty, he is indeed still here, weathering snowstorms and sub-freezing temperatures). Waiting for when Alex and I had time to go get a Christmas tree (it was this past Monday). Waiting for Jesus to arrive, in bread and wine, in beginnings and endings, in the faces and presence of dear ones and neighbors and strangers, in the manger.
A gift I wait for each week during Advent, and again in Lent, is the poem that Sara-Kay Mooney shares each Sunday in these seasons. You can follow “Poems for the Season” through this link to Sara-Kay’s substack to receive these Advent and Lent treasures. This past Sunday she shared a poem about waiting, by Tony Hoagland. It is below, and one of the things I love about this poem is the way Marie’s movement between the hospital and the adoption agency illustrates the paradox of Christian waiting—both its stillness and its activity. Even and especially in the midst of death and the holding of a future that can feel heavy, we are called to keep watch together for resurrection and new life.
May you be blessed in the waiting of these threshold days, in all of your activity and your stillness.
Yours in Christ,
Melissa+
_________________________________________
Migration, by Tony Hoagland
This year Marie drives back and forth
from the hospital room of her dying friend
to the office of the adoption agency.
I bet sometimes she doesn’t know
What threshold she is waiting at—
the hand of her sick friend, hot with fever;
the theoretical baby just a lot of paperwork so far.
But next year she might be standing by a grave,
wearing black with a splash of
banana vomit on it,
the little girl just starting to say Sesame Street
and Cappuccino latte grand Mommy.
The future ours for a while to hold, with its heaviness—
and hope moving from one location to another
like the holy ghost that it is.
Source: What Narcissism Means To Me (Graywolf Press, 2003).
12/12/25
Dear Ones of Christ Church,
A reminder that this weekend at our services on Saturday at 5p and Sunday at 8a, we will celebrate Holy Eucharist as usual, and on Sunday at 10a we will celebrate this season of holy waiting, attentiveness, and preparation with a service of Advent Lessons and Carols.
In all three of these worship services, we will hear the words of prophets, including the Magnificat, the song of the prophet Mary, about the ways God’s powerful actions have been magnified in her life and in the life of the world. Mary is also, of course, the mother of Jesus, and when I pray the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), I also hear Jesus’s words in the Beatitudes (Luke 6:20-26).
“[God] has lifted up the lowly,” sings Mary. “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God,” says Jesus.
“[God] has filled the hungry with good things,” sings Mary. “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled,” says Jesus.
This week I am giving thanks for the prophet Mary’s bold faithfulness, and for how much Jesus must have learned from his blessed mother about who God is, and what God is up to in the world.
I invite you to pray with this video, “Magnificat,” from the SALT Project.
Yours in Christ,
Melissa+
12/5/25
Dear Ones of Christ Church,
It was a gift to gather with so many of you last Sunday to bless and make Advent wreaths in the parish hall. Many thanks to Lynne Neeley for her generous donations of materials and time and teaching. Lynne cut the branches for the wreaths herself from evergreens around her home, and after I made a wreath I loved the way my hands smelled sharply and cleanly of pine pitch and sap.
Talking with Lynne about how she had collected wreath branches for us from her neighbor trees reminded me of a reflection my spiritual director sent me last week by Amy Frykholm, describing how she makes her Advent wreath each year. Here’s an excerpt (you can read her entire reflection here):
For more than 20 years I have been making the same Advent wreath, although it is never an exact replica of the previous year’s attempt. It starts with a dish that can fit four candles around. Then I fill the dish with birdseed.
The next part is the most essential. I go out into the woods or the cemetery or the alleys, and I look for natural shapes and colors that are of the moment. The dried poppy heads are probably my favorite, because after the poppy has bloomed and the petals have fallen off, the remainder looks like a star, with a dark heart like a black hole.
But I also love how different each head of grass is. There is a stunning variety. For color I look for kinnikinnick berries and rose hips. I look for spruce branches and pine cones. The key to this searching is that whatever I find, it speaks to the now and the here. The reason I’ve kept this practice up is because in the deadness of early winter, I find beauty that never fails to surprise me.
I lay this bounty on the birdseed in whatever way inspires me. When Advent is over, I toss the whole thing near the bird feeder for what poet Ada Limón calls the “after party.”
Inspired by Lynne and Amy, on Monday I went out and snipped some rose hips from my garden and added them to our wreath. The wreath is now a holy combination of plants from my home place on the shores of Buzzards Bay, and plants from my church place, on the shores of Plymouth Bay.
This mixing of places seems right in a wreath made to mark a season that calls us to pay attention to the ways Jesus crosses boundaries of space and time and place to arrive among us—to arrive in the past as a baby; to arrive now, in our present encounters with one another, with bread and wine, with creation; and to arrive again in the future to reconcile all things to God at the end of time. Can an Advent wreath hold all of this, theologically? No. Maybe. I don’t know. But there is something about paying attention to the feel of evergreen needles, the scent of pine pitch, the sudden warmth when I cup my hand to light a candle, the sound or silence of a blessing, that helps me to pay attention to the One who holds all things, including us.
Yours in Christ, with Advent blessings,
Melissa+