Laurel Elisabeth Stevens

Sunday, November 22, marked the end of the church year. It's called Christ the King Sunday according to the church calendar. The pastor our family watched online that Sunday quipped that anything that meant an ending to this year sounded good to her. I agreed with a hearty laugh from my comfortable seat at home. Our presence at home was an indicator of what we'd like to have come to an end--a year of separation, online events, and extra-precaution for in-person gatherings.   We were online that morning, and weren't able to connect to our own church's streaming service at the moment, yet another indicator of things-not-right. And so began the last week of the church year. Thanksgiving, perched almost at the end, a confluence of church and civic calendars, usually offers a chance to gather around a big table. In my family, that means lots of stories and reminiscences. I wonder what we'll say in years to come about this Thanksgiving. We attempted to eat together--yet ...

I am sharing this week and in posts to follow a few influences--videos, books, people, places, stories--that have helped me notice my blindspots with regard to racial justice. The story is ever growing. In fact, sometimes the more I learn, the harder it is to write. So I'll just start here, hoping that if I tell one or two stories it could be a way forward to you reading or telling one or two more stories, and that could be a way forward for all of us. In 2017, our family visited Washington D.C. My priority stop was the National Museum of African American History and Culture which had opened less than one year before, but I had not planned far enough ahead to get tickets before we arrived. So every morning of our five-day visit I logged on to the website at 6 AM to try to get five tickets (we had an exchange student with us). One morning I was able to get three. I wasn't sure how that would work out, but we figured we would go get in line for the other two and see what would...

It was Christmas Eve.   We sat in semi-darkness in the living room in my grandparents’ house on Hunter’s Run, all of us sitting in chairs and on the soft blue carpet, more or less in a circle: Grandmother, Granddad, Dad, Mom, Tim, Josh, Nathaniel and me.   The only lights were those from the Christmas tree.   We had come from church and our fingers and noses were still chilled from the brisk Pennsylvania air.   The exhilaration of singing carols with a brass ensemble coursed through me, but I was content to be home now, waiting.   I was fourteen, but our tradition of opening one present on Christmas Eve and saving the rest until Christmas morning still had me grinning with anticipation.   But before we could do that Dad began talking to us in a thoughtful voice, asking us if we knew the word “incarnation.”  Sure, I knew it.  It was one of those words we tossed about in church.  Salvation, incarnation, revelation . . .I didn’t need to r...