The cedar waxwings arrived yesterday. Waxwings are wonderful, mysterious birds. Here in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, their visits are brief. They come to our backyard for
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Author: Jill Crainshaw
Jill Crainshaw is professor of Worship and Liturgical Theology at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Crainshaw emphasizes in her writing and teaching how Christian worship and leadership arise from and return to human experience. Her newest book, When I in Awesome Wonder: Liturgy Distilled from Everyday Life (The Liturgical Press, September 2017), explores how worship’s sacramental elements such as bread, wine, and water are connected to local fields and farmers, waters and artisans. Crainshaw’s teaching focuses on intersections between religious leadership and sustainability, social justice, and “grounded” human experiences. Crainshaw is an ordained teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Rock Us Into Joy
We pray for strength and courage, for wisdom to seek Your ways.
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Advent Porch Light Liturgy
During Advent, perhaps we can turn on a porch light and welcome someone home.
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Be Ye Kind to One Another
I pray that Christian worship practices cultivate kindness—birth it in its most radical and world-changing forms in the marrow of our bones.
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The Writing Work of the People
Words are powerful. How we use words in worship matters.
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Creation, Day Three: Soil Underneath Our Fingernails
The Genesis verses that depict Day Three of Creation invite us to plumb unexpected sacramental depths.
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Shoe Polish, Gospel Gratitude and the First Day of School
Christians can impact what happens in schools is by embodying one of the Gospel’s most powerful gifts: gratitude.
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Colors against the Night
Our rituals—both those that reside within religious traditions and those that arise out of everyday life and communal histories—remind us of who we are.
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Teaching Memories
The point of embodied remembering is not so much to sharpen our recollection of historical detail as it is to connect us to others who have dug in this dirt, walked on this earth, and danced in this place before.
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risus paschalis: when dust laughs
Risus paschalis means “the Easter laugh.” The pastor of the United Church of Christ congregation I attended some years ago had a practice of telling
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