This spring, Calvary’s vestry named its 2021 focus as “Welcome to Calvary.” Whether you and your family have been part of Calvary for generations or you walked in for the first time last Sunday, no one is being welcomed back to an unchanged church. We all need to be welcomed anew after the year we’ve just lived through. So
This week my brother flies in to help our dad move to Silver Spring, Maryland. And among the things we’ll need to attend to is his beloved 1953 Pontiac. The car is the same model as the one Dad was driving when he met our mother in Dallas. He was in seminary, and
My mother told me about the greatest compliment she ever received. A music director once said to her,
‘Marilyn, you are the best accompanist I have ever heard. You know, the tendency of most concert-quality pianists and organists like yourself is to outshine and often overpower singers and other musicians. You don’t do that. You know
For more than 25 years Fred Goldsmith has been the smiling face of Calvary to almost everyone who came through our doors during the week. For children being dropped off at Calvary Place or neighbors needing help making a connection or a utility payment, for flower guild folks or people coming in for pastoral care or midweek worship
As I write this short note, I am preparing to return to Jackson from New York City to preach at the funeral of a good friend, who died last night. My thoughts are too full of him this morning to write about anything or anyone else. I beg your indulgence as I write a few
This week, I met a young woman who is a very talented singer, actress, and music teacher. She has done phenomenal work in the music and arts communities of Chicago and New Orleans, and even appeared in the movie “Pitch Perfect.” She decided to move back to her hometown of Memphis last year in hopes
Since we have just celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, I’m thinking about spirit-filled people, particularly my beloved friend Margaret Wright Jones, known simply as ‘Be’.
In Knoxville, Tennessee, where we both lived, Be was a brilliant, eccentric, creative woman, the life of every party she attended – and she attended many. But
EARTH, AIR, FIRE, WATER, the monumental weavings by Henry Easterwood that have graced the Great Hall for a number of years, are heading to another location. Those artworks – for some contemplative mid-century masterworks and for others abstract rugs on the wall – filled our narrow and soaring spaces in a dramatic manner. Easterwood’s quartet will soon
In a few weeks, our daughter Kate will graduate from college, and she’ll have some decisions to make. When I was her age my biggest decisions were about not entering the workforce in any way that actually required the expensive college degree I’d recently acquired. Decisions that also left time for a few
First of all, thank you. Thank you for the way you have adapted and engaged in new ways and created new possibilities for ministry and prayer and connection during this pandemic year that disrupted almost every aspect of our lives.
The CDC’s recent release of updated guidelines, which were affirmed in our bishop’s announcement, gives more