Anytime can be story time as far as my kids are concerned, but is there at time limit on when you should stop enjoying the books written for the kids or young adults? And are we limiting our children’s childhood (and stories of their own) when we limit their freedom and don’t leave them alone?

There’s a reason why children with trauma (those who have been truly left alone) don’t “get over it?”

Parents too.

Gangly-limbed teens may trick or treat at your door this week, perhaps it’s best if we remember its hard work growing up.

Have a quick bite of a story that will soothe and shock you in sixty quick seconds. Or settle into one of our favorites from one of our own, Angela’s book is being reprinted. Traveling and wanting to “do like the Romans do?”  (but in the  US ) you can now find the local flavor with ease.

On a more personal note, more information about some of our own stories from the history of our faith and people is now on the church website. (Please, keep these coming.) But don’t miss this fascinating find about much, much earlier faith stories.

This publication on the church site is also the source for one of our two (!) first draft poems this week. From Melissa Y.:

one thing (among many)
that religion has to offer
is a daily walk
with the possibility
of being wrong
about almost everything

of wondering
how dark that glass
really is

of finding that
for all my knowing,
it’s the unknowing
that feels most valuable,
this doubt not of God,
but of myself,
in a way that smiles
at my teaspoon grasp
of mystery

of learning to accept
mistakenness as a grace,
and those awkward,
stumbling steps
as dance

Our second poem comes from Jessie who crafted hers after reading a piece that spoke to her own experience when her spouse came out and moved on.

After years of tight confinement,
In the dark,
You emerge:
A beautiful, rainbow butterfly
Free to wave your true colors in the wind.
And I? I am left behind, forgotten
The empty husk, a forlorn chrysalis dangling from a branch.