Sunday is going to be a great day at LPC. It’s the Sunday of our Christmas Cantata, A Celebration of Carols. Nearly sixty voices will join in bringing a message of Scripture lessons and carols traditional and new.  Holly Waterson and her team have a great present for us. Please don’t miss it! And bring a friend!

In fact, I count fifty-seven choir voices listed in the bulletin plus two narrators. As I said, almost sixty voices to tell the story in lessons and carols. I am delighted that my voice gets to be one of those almost sixty. But don’t worry. Before you start changing your Sunday plans, let me assure you that I am not among the fifty-seven choir voices. I join Lynn Domasinsky as one of the two narrators. Continue reading →

Hanukkah begins tomorrow at sundown and continues through the following Sunday. If you don’t remember much about this at-one-time-lesser Jewish holiday, here’s a good resource from the History Channel.

Yes, by all accounts Hanukkah was once a very minor celebration on the Jewish calendar, certainly not one of the holy days. But no longer. Jews, it seems, have a Hanukkah problem. The thing has spun out of control.

The Religious News Service tells the story of the Jews’ Hanukkah problem in an article picked up here in the Washington Post and elsewhere. The RNS reporters interviewed Ayelet Waldman, a Jewish mother of four and author who says, “I loathe Hanukkah.” From the article: Hanukkah, she says, has become a kind of faux Christmas, “a sad imitation complete with six-starred stringed lights, sugar cookies, and themed wrapping paper. I celebrate it only because my children would be crushed, and because I don’t want them to be so envious that they convert.“
 
Please, Ms Waldman, don’t allow your kids to convert. Continue reading →

Sunday is the first Sunday, the first day, of Advent 2012. In a general sense Advent is the four week period before Christmas. Originally a season of the church year, it has come to be related to such things as Advent calendars with a piece of candy or a picture of a reindeer or elf behind every Christmas countdown window.

Being a relatively low church in terms of things liturgical, LPC does not give close attention to all the festivals and seasons of the year. But we mark Advent. We light a candle each of the four Sundays of the season, following the tradition of first a purple hope candle, then a purple peace candle, followed by a pink joy candle and finally a purple love candle. There is nothing in the Bible about the candles or their colors. It’s just a tradition, but a good tradition. Continue reading →

I am always interested in reading the President’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation. Republican or Democrat, soaring prose or pedestrian bureaucratese, the proclamations reflect something of the hopes and fears, the confidence or anxiety of the nation to which they are addressed. I am partial to Washington’s First and Lincoln’s 1863. You can read every Thanksgiving Day Proclamation from 1789 to 2011 here. This year’s has not yet been released.

Washington spoke of giving humble thanks to “that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.” Lincoln wrote of the nation’s increase even in a time of civil war and then added, “No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.” Continue reading →

I have not been a Californian for nearly thirty years, but my former home state still fascinates me. On Election Day Californians approved their Proposition 30 by a 54%-46% margin. They decided to raise the taxes that every single one of them pays. Prop 30 had a provision for an income tax surcharge on those earning more than $250,000 per year, but the measure also raises the state sales tax meaning that every person who pays for goods or services in California will be paying more as soon as the election results are certified. According to the new law, they will be paying for the state’s schools. They hope to raise $6 billion a year. Continue reading →