My first You Are Here Stories contribution is live. December’s theme is Finding Place. Enjoy! ***** The snapshot is of a girl in a gray Allegheny College hoodie, one she purchased in the campus bookstore on one of her pre-college visits. She is gazing at the camera, chin on fist, an open notebook on the…
Finding my place: You Are Here Stories
Some of you may have heard that I have embarked on a new writing journey for 2016—starting in December of 2015. It’s a year-long writing fellowship with the You Are Here Stories blog: You Are Here | True stories about roots, identity, and place. The founders of this blog met in the Glen Workshop West Spiritual Writing…
Advent 2015: Some thoughts for the longest night of the year
On the second Sunday of Advent, we lit the peace candle at Friendship Community Church. Then we were given a few moments to write our own prayers for peace before walking forward to place them into a basket next to the burning light. I didn’t have nearly enough time or space on my 3×5 index…
New website, new colleagues, new cousin: my July newsletter
This morning, Bonnie, Tyler, Peter, and I gathered for a team meeting, reviewing our goals for the upcoming school year and talking about what it means to do “holy marketing.” How do we pursue our work in a way that reflects God’s Kingdom, both explicitly and implicitly? I love that I get to work in a place…
51 years
On June 20, 1964, Janet Fulton Hamilton married John Anthony Maczuzak at Pigeon Creek Presbyterian Church in Eighty Four, Pennsylvania. Today would have been their 51st wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad! I love you both, and I miss you very much.
On Ships, Harbors and Sailing into Uncharted Territory
One of my young campus ministry colleagues posted something to Facebook recently and I was reminded of this article that I wrote more than a decade ago for publication in the September 2003 issue of the monthly publication I edited back then for the CCO, The Ministry Exchange: an exchange of ideas & resources by & for CCO…
On Advent and the “new normal”: my December newsletter
As we enter Advent, this season of celebrating the first coming of Jesus Christ, and waiting and anticipating His promised second coming, I am experiencing another kind of waiting. I am bracing myself for December 27, two days after Christmas, and the first-year anniversary of my father’s death. The last time I saw Dad outside…
Telling Sandie’s story: my September newsletter
“Sandie and Nathan are there for you in every way that you need,” Zach, a junior on Edinboro University’s wrestling team, told me when we talked on the phone a few weeks ago. “My family says they are Christians, but they curse a lot and are really negative. Sandie and Nathan are like a second…
On September 11, 2014
During a lunch break last week, a few of my co-workers and I were remembering where we were when John F. Kennedy was shot (for all but one of us, not yet born), what we remembered about the day the Space Shuttle exploded (three of us were sophomores in college), and finally, what we remembered about September…
All my favorite people are broken
I signed up for the Glen Workshop about a month before my dad died. If I’d known that my dad was about to die, I’m pretty sure I would not have signed up. But I did, and I had talked my friend Jen into signing up, too, so I didn’t feel like I could back out….
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