A few years ago my youngest daughter, Mattie, was in 6th grade and participated in the Junior Assembly cotillion in the fall. This annual Richmond, Virginia dance tradition began in the 1920s as the Junior German with the purpose of gathering young people together to learn basic social etiquette and a variety of dances. 

One night the theme was, Dancing through the Decades, so Mattie donned a flower child look complete with a peasant blouse, daisy pants, platform sandals, a fringed vest and braids in her hair (courtesy of her big sister).  Moreover, Mattie at the age of 12 was quite tall for her age. She was about my height, which is 67 inches. And most 6th grade boys according to a bit of last minute research on my part are 58 inches. So, you can imagine my delight watching Mattie (wearing platform sandals which put her up another 2 inches) and the boys she was partnered with negotiate this challenge. It’s not that easy for a little guy to twirl his partner, when she’s 11 inches taller than him, but it worked out.  The icing on the cake was when Mattie got in the car after the dance, and in the midst of sharing the details of the evening announced, “You know I have to be honest – I find it especially fun when my partner is a lot shorter than me!”   

I think that girls and boys learning new dances is one of the ways God wants to delight us. I even think that gazing at stars and being awed by celestial images are just a few of the ways God wants to  transform us. But it’s our choice, really, to recognize it and claim it. 

It takes a bit of courage to have this kind of intention—-to live,  to find something to enjoy, to get up the energy to face the day. In fact, it’s finding something right about every day of our lives that could be the real challenge.

“Joy doesn’t just happen.” says Henri Nouwen,  “You have to choose joy…and keep choosing it.” 

Sometimes we miss the message God has penned for us in the rhythms of our lives. But then I remember it’s just the way we’re wired. Our default is to focus on the problems, to miss the details of delight that are woven into each day.

The secret to changing our perspective is practice. That’s the hard and easy truth. We are who we are because we’ve practiced our way of thinking and living for quite some time. Change requires shifting our practice to new ways of thinking and seeing.

In the midst of these days when the daylight wanes early and the darkness continues to grow I want to encourage you to practice, choosing the joy. Practice, practice, practice every single day.

In between running errands and holiday preparations, mealtimes and doctor’s visits, physical therapy and checking the mail, paying bills and listening to the news—practice, as Nouwen recommends, choosing joy. Practice in small doses and increasing frequency. Practice saying yes to God, yes to joy, yes to life!

May you find joy today in unexpected ways that delight and fill your heart.

Several years ago, a Jewish Rabbi visited the retirement community where I work and shared about the centrality of gratitude in Judaism. He explained the daily practice of giving thanks even in the midst of difficulty. Gratitude, he reminded us, is about a perspective of the mind and heart.

The Yiddish folktale, It Could Always Be Worse by Margot Zemach, is a wonderful reminder of this truth. In the story, a farmer and his wife and six children were overwhelmed with life together in their tiny one-room hut and sought the advice of the local Rabbi. The Rabbi advised them to bring their chickens into the house to live with them. The farmer followed the Rabbi’s advice, and when he found things unbearable, he sought the Rabbi’s counsel again! This time, the farmer was encouraged to bring his goats into the house. Once again the farmer was overwhelmed, but persevered until he couldn’t bear it. This time the Rabbi advised him to bring his cow into the house. By now, life in the tiny hut was pandemonium. The chickens, the goats, the cows, the children, the wife, the farmer! Finally, the Rabbi instructed the farmer to return all of the animals to the farmyard. Relieved with this instruction, the farmer did as was advised, and that night the family slept soundly. The next day, the farmer returned to the Rabbi one last time. “Holy Rabbi,” he cried, “you have made life sweet for me. With just my family in the hut, it’s so quiet, so roomy, so peaceful…What a pleasure!”

It really is about perspective, about how we want to approach life. I love how G.K. Chesterton captures this same sentiment: “You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

Another approach is to simply save the pessimism for tomorrow, as Maya Angelou suggests, “Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed.”

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Perhaps, as Henry Ward Beecher, a grateful posture is all that is required, “The unthankful heart… discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!”

Gratitude has a power of its own. May a thankful heart guide you in the days and nights before you.

If you are in the Northern Hemisphere in the south this is a good month to get outside, walk, run, breathe. It’s also a good time to get clear and to think about what’s important. Fresh air can do that–clear the mind, open the heart, invite perspective.

My November notes explore the idea of knowing what’s important. If you don’t know him, I would like to introduce you to Eliud Kipchoge–a runner. He knows who he is. He knows what’s important.

So, take that walk, breathe that fresh air, and while you are out there visualize what matters most. Happy November!

“Coming in hot!” shouted David, navigating a pathway through the chairs to the oyster-shucking station. Roasting oysters, I discovered, was a craft David, the host, had learned in his childhood days from his father when they lived in Wilmington, North Carolina, and then rediscovered in his adult years when he moved to a house with the “perfect” fire pit in the suburbs of Richmond. He quickly reclaimed this family tradition from his childhood and made a habit of sharing it with others. 

It was a chilly night, with temperatures in the forties and an eclectic mix of folding chairs and camp chairs set up in the backyard. A waist-high plywood table held an assortment of tools, bowls of melted butter, and cocktail sauce. About thirty neighbors, friends, family, and coworkers shared bits and pieces of our connection to the host, David, who wore a Carolina cap, flannel shirt, and jeans. In between greeting guests, he tossed perfectly sized logs from a small woodpile near the shrubs onto the fire. Ned, a gentleman from Laurel, Mississippi, who owns property south of Jackson, said he hasn’t been able to travel for some time because his dog’s diabetes requires him to administer two injections a day. Jack, another guest, had recently retired after being broadsided at the crack of dawn on his way to the gym. His gray Honda flipped twice, and he’s lucky to be alive, he said, but forever changed. His good-natured wife affectionately teased him about being added to her list of responsibilities as she navigates the care of her elderly father, who lives with them. An older couple who had moved to the area 18 months ago to be near their daughter, after living for 30 years in a 50-plus community, said they’re happy to be living alongside young and old again. 

We traded these stories during the mesmerizing roasting of oysters over a fire pit. David would dump a bucket holding about thirty oysters—alternating between Rappahannock (a little sweet) and Chincoteague (the salty ones)—onto a square, quarter-inch-thick metal plate carefully positioned over the firepit. Then, with a heavy fire-resistant gray glove on his left hand, he would gently spread out the oysters. Finally, he covered the crusty shells in a piece of burlap soaked in water (not Bourbon, as one witty guest suggested) and added a little more water to the mix for good measure. The hissing sound and curls of steam assured him all was in order. Every so often, David checked to see if the mollusks had begun to pop open, and when he intuited they were ready, he scooped them off the metal plate with a large shovel to move to the next stage.

“How many do you buy when you’re hosting a roast?” I asked. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” he responded. “I bought 300 for tonight. 30 people, 300 oysters. It sounded about right.” 

Yes, it was. It really was. Thirty people, 300 oysters, and a story worth sharing and living again.

On occasions such as these, I am reminded once again of the power of stories and shared experiences to ground us and to knit us together as people. “We need connection and stories and experiences that help us transcend our own lives and to connect with others and ideas bigger than ourselves,” writes Julia Taylor. I believe our world is hungry for this kind of connection. Whether roasting oysters around a fire pit or simply spending time with others, these moments remind us we belong to something more.

“We need connection and stories and experiences that help us transcend our own lives and to connect with others and ideas bigger than ourselves.”–Julia Taylor

“Would you like to join me?” I asked my husband. He was startled. He had plans, and I wanted to drive 131 miles one way to see some trees.

“A ginkgo?” he echoed. “Is this a joke?”

“They are golden,” I replied. “And Blandy has one of the largest, if not THE largest, grove of ginkgoes in North America.” He said he would let me know.

I had almost forgotten about the ginkgoes at Blandy Experiment Station, but last week, when the seasonal change of color finally appeared to be descending upon Richmond, I remembered. I checked the Blandy website and realized that the time had come; the ginkgoes were ablaze. Oddly enough, I had a Monday that was unusually light in appointments, so I moved some items to another day and made plans to slip north.

The Ginkgo Grove at Blandy is the result of an experiment that Dr. Orland White, the first Director, conducted in the 1930s to determine what proportion of ginkgo seeds would develop into male or female trees. Dr. White, along with his students, planted a ginkgo grove using seeds collected from a tree at the University of Virginia. And now, all these years later, over 300 trees stand, with the answer roughly one to one: male to female. Ginkgo trees take 20 years to mature and can live 1000 years, so Dr. White didn’t live long enough to know the answer, but now decades later, the Grove is an invitation to wander and gaze upon the fruits of his labor. Late October and early November are the best times to come, so when I remembered the ginkgoes and saw several days of rain in the forecast, I knew I couldn’t postpone this adventure.

When I was a teenager my mother gave me a pendant made from a ginkgo leaf dipped in gold. Mother had been fond of ginkgoes since her college days at what was then Mississippi State College for Women in Columbus, Mississippi. A gift from Japan in the early 19th century, the ginkgo was said to be one of the oldest trees on campus. The stately golden-leafed tree was a memory she carried with her, planting her own ginkgo tree at our home years later in the Mississippi Delta. In early December, mother would often walk into the house and say, “Have you seen the ginkgoes?” Some days, she would carry one small golden leaf and place it on her bedside table. I wasn’t exactly sure what a ginkgo was, but then she would point out the window to the one she had planted with the fan-shaped leaf, half green, half gold, slowly changing. Gradually, over time, I began to recognize the ginkgo. I didn’t know then what a gift she was giving me. Not simply the pendant, but the knowledge and awareness of the beauty of an extraordinary tree.

Last fall, a friend of mine posted weekly pictures on Facebook of the ginkgo tree she walked by each day. “Keep posting!” I encouraged. And she did. Watching the green turn to gold is so mysterious and beautiful–a transformation before your eyes.

Perhaps that’s what’s so alluring —the simple, subtle transformation, the change that takes place, and with that change invites us all to see something anew. Even now, as I think about the ginkgo, I wonder what change I’m being invited to. What slow, subtle transformation am I in the midst of that will one day be clear? I can’t be certain, but I know it’s there. And I’ll know the beauty of transformation whenever I walk among the ginkgoes.

“Transformation is an ongoing process that tends to appear ordinary, when, in fact, something extraordinary is taking place.”–Suzy Ross

It has been a full month. I went to Mississippi to see my mom for a few days and celebrate her 93rd birthday. In that time, I recorded an oral history–asking about her childhood, young adulthood, midlife, and the present.

There was so much to ponder. Perhaps the most striking thing was her willingness to share her observations about challenging times and how she has processed those experiences over time. Some hurt still lingers. Some uncertainty. And yet, there is peace and perspective. Time gives us perspective. It’s hard to have perspective when you are right in the center of a challenge. What is going on? Where is this taking me? How can I respond in the best possible way? At least, those are the questions I find myself asking. I don’t know that my responses are always on point, but I do know that time gives perspective, and I grow a bit with each encounter.

Sarah’s Journey

Welcome Home.

Two words. Three syllables. And more meaning than one could ever imagine.

Take Sarah, for example. She traveled to China to adopt her daughter—multiple flights, time zones blurring together. Sarah and her mother, two generations flying halfway around the world, already weary yet wired with anticipation.

And then the moment arrived.

In that room at the orphanage, a woman placed the little girl in Sarah’s arms. She was maybe two years old. Small, uncertain.

But then something happened that Sarah will never forget: The little girl let out this big sigh—like she’d been holding her breath for months—and nuzzled into Sarah’s neck. Just settled there.

The journey home was exhausting. Multiple stops, long delays. By the time they were on the final leg—Atlanta to Richmond—everyone was running on fumes.

When the plane rolled to the gate, the pilot came on the intercom:

“Welcome to Richmond.”

Then he paused.

“It’s been my privilege to bring a special little lady to her new home. Welcome home.”

When they disembarked, about forty friends were waiting—they’d waited through all the flight delays to welcome them. The little girl, so greatly anticipated, tolerated being passed around for a bit, but when she’d had enough, she let out a holler and reached for Sarah.

Sarah’s insides smiled.

Because in that moment, she knew: her daughter knew who she was.

But coming home wasn’t just that one beautiful moment. The little girl screamed—car seats, diaper changes, injections. Everything in those early weeks was about navigation—figuring out together what worked, what this new family would look like.

And Sarah’s mother? A widow, she never slept at her own house again. She wanted to be with her daughter and granddaughter every minute. And Sarah’s home became her home. When Sarah went to work, her mother watched over every breath that little girl took. The second she would stir from a nap, Sarah’s mother would pick her up and hold her for the rest of the afternoon.

Three generations, learning to be family. Not perfectly. Not always smoothly. But with practice.

Home wasn’t just a place they returned to. It was being created—in the orphanage when that little girl sighed into Sarah’s neck, at the Richmond airport when she reached for Sarah through the crowd, in those exhausting early weeks of navigation, in Sarah’s mother’s decision to move into the spare room.

Home was being created through practice.

That’s the kind of homecoming I want to talk about today.

Homecoming Is Complicated

But here’s what I’ve been thinking about—homecoming is more complicated than we sometimes imagine. It’s not always about returning to what was. Sometimes it’s about discovering what’s becoming.

Think about homecomings in your own life. The soldier returning from deployment—not just to the place they left, but to relationships that have changed, to a person they’ve become through experiences their loved ones didn’t share. There’s joy, yes, but also the complex work of re-entry, of learning to belong again.

The truth is—it’s really not that easy to come home.

The questions I want to ponder with you this morning are these:

Who are we now?

Who are we becoming?

And what is the opportunity in that?

The Prodigal Son: A Transformation Story

Jesus told a story about homecoming that everyone thinks they know. A young man demands his inheritance, leaves home, squanders everything, and comes crawling back. His father welcomes him with open arms. The older brother gets angry. We’ve heard it so many times.

But what if this isn’t just a story about forgiveness? What if it’s about transformation—about who we all become through the long journey of living?

The son who returns isn’t the same person who left. He’s been changed by distance, by failure, by hunger, by the long walk home rehearsing his speech. He thinks he knows what he’s asking for—just to be a servant, just to survive. But the father doesn’t even let him finish his carefully prepared words.

Instead, there’s the robe, the ring, the sandals, the feast. The son returns expecting crumbs—just let me be a servant, just let me survive. But the father’s response is “exceedingly abundantly above” anything the son dared imagine.

Paul captures this same divine mathematics in Ephesians: God “is able to accomplish exceedingly abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”

Both passages—Ephesians and Luke’s gospel—reveal the same truth: God’s vision for our lives, our relationships, our community is always bigger than our own small dreams of what’s possible.

And here’s what we often miss—the father has been transformed, too. This isn’t the same man who watched his son disappear over the horizon. He’s been changed by loss, by waiting, by the daily choice to keep watching the road. When he runs toward his returning son, he’s not just offering forgiveness—he’s revealing who he has become through this journey.

Even the older brother is being invited into transformation. The story doesn’t end with his anger; it ends with his father’s invitation to discover what it might mean to be part of a family that celebrates grace.

None of them are who they were when the story began.

God Isn’t Done With Any of Us

This is the hope-filled truth that changes everything: God isn’t done with any of us.

The middle schooler struggling to fit in, wondering if they’ll ever find their place—God’s power is at work in them, preparing something “exceeding abundantly above” what they can imagine about their own worth and belonging.

The new parents, exhausted and uncertain, discovering depths of love and fear they never knew existed—they’re not failing when they don’t have all the answers; they’re becoming.

The 89-year-old widower, after 70 years of marriage, figuring out things for the first time—grocery shopping, cooking for one, navigating loneliness. At 89! Still becoming someone new, still discovering capacities he didn’t know he had.

God’s mathematics don’t follow our timelines. There is always more.

Twenty years ago, I was convinced God must be done with me, that I had become all that God had planned. But what I discovered over time is that there is so much more to each of us than we could ever imagine. New ideas, fresh understandings, different perspectives—life keeps revealing more of who God dreams us to be.

Why This Matters

But why does this matter? Why does it make a difference to believe that transformation never stops?

Because when we’re committed to the idea that people are fixed—that “this is just how they are”—we have only two choices: accept what we don’t like or walk away. But when we understand that becoming never stops—suddenly there’s a third option: staying open.

I think about a colleague who left her job—a job she loved—because she couldn’t relate to a new boss. And I wonder—what if she had trusted that God does things with time? That people change, that we change, that new perspectives can emerge from difficult transitions?

Our first read on people and situations isn’t always our final read. Sometimes what looks like an ending is actually a beginning. Sometimes what feels like loss is making space for something we couldn’t have imagined.

The 93-Year-Old Photographer

A few weeks ago a woman stopped by my office. 93 years old—sharp, energetic, eyes bright with excitement. She wanted to show me her latest photography project.

She didn’t pick up a camera until she was in her eighties. Her eighties. And now, in her nineties, she’s creating work that brings her profound joy. She’s contributing in meaningful ways, seeing the world through new eyes, discovering things about herself she didn’t even know until now.

Before leaving, she said, “Doing this makes me so happy. I don’t want to simply exist. I want to live.”

Ninety-three years old, and still becoming. Still discovering. Still choosing life over existence.

That’s what transformation looks like. Not dramatic. Not sudden. Just a woman in her nineties with a camera, choosing to live.

Lynda Van Devanter

But becoming isn’t always that joyful. Sometimes it’s harder—for the person becoming and for those who love them.

Consider Lynda Van Devanter. She was twenty-one years old when she arrived in Vietnam as a nurse. Twenty-one. Fresh out of nursing school, idealistic, believing she was prepared for what she’d face. She wasn’t.

She spent a year in places with names like Pleiku and Qui Nhon. She held nineteen-year-olds as they died. She made impossible decisions about who got treatment first when there weren’t enough doctors, enough supplies, enough time. She saw things no one should see.

When she came home, her family threw her a welcome-home party. They wanted to hear about her “adventure.” They kept saying, “You must be so glad to be home, to get back to normal.”

But there was no normal to get back to.

At night, she had nightmares—the kind where you wake up not sure where you are, your heart pounding. During the day, sudden noises made her jump. She couldn’t explain what she’d witnessed, couldn’t find words for it. And her family—they wanted their daughter back. The girl who’d left. The one with plans to work at the local hospital, maybe get married, and settle down.

For years, there was this gap between them. Van Devanter felt unseen. Her family felt like they’d lost their daughter to something they couldn’t reach.

It took decades. Decades. For both sides to discover something beautiful.

They didn’t need to recover who she used to be. They needed to learn to love who she was becoming.

Van Devanter eventually found her voice as an advocate for veterans. She wrote a book—Home Before Morning—that told the truth about what nurses experienced in Vietnam. She testified before Congress. She helped create the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington, D.C. She became someone who could bear witness not just to suffering, but to the strength it takes to survive and speak truth.

And her family? They learned to see her not as someone broken by war, but as someone transformed by it. Someone whose compassion had been deepened, whose courage had been tested and proven, whose life had meaning precisely because of what she’d endured and how she’d chosen to respond.

The transformation happened on both sides. And it took time—years and years of time.

The kind of time that teaches us that homecoming isn’t always immediate. Sometimes it’s a long, patient practice of learning to see each other freshly. This is how transformation theology plays out in real life—not in moments, but over the long arc of years, through the patient work of learning to see each other freshly, again and again.

Oswald Chambers said it this way: “Beware of looking back at what you once were, when God wants you to become something you’ve never been.”

This is the profound hope of transformation—that who we’re becoming can be more powerful than the record of who we’ve been.

But it requires courage to become. Courage to become someone new, and courage to see others freshly when they’re trying to change.

Offering Each Other a Fresh Perspective

What if we could offer each other the gift of a fresh perspective?

In our families, what if we could resist the comfortable shorthand of “I know who you are” and instead stay open to surprise? What if we could let people grow beyond the boxes we’ve put them in?

And what if the church—this church—could become a place where people don’t have to stay frozen in old versions of themselves?

Practice: Henry’s Story

The great dancer Martha Graham understood something profound: “We learn by practice… Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire.”

I’ve been watching Henry practice.

Henry has always been someone with answers. Good answers, usually. If you have a problem, Henry can tell you how to solve it. If you’re uncertain, Henry knows the way forward. It’s who he’s been for as long as I’ve known him.

But lately, I’ve noticed something different. Someone will bring up a struggle or a question, and Henry will pause. And instead of jumping in with the solution, he’ll ask: “What do you think?”

And then—this is the remarkable part—he listens.

It doesn’t sound like much, does it? Four words and some silence. But for Henry, it’s a completely different way of showing up. He’s practicing being the person who makes space instead of filling it. Practicing trust that others have wisdom worth hearing. Practicing a new way of connecting.

Some days you can see him holding back the answer he wants to give. But he’s practicing.

That’s what transformation looks like in real time.

What Are You Practicing?

What are you practicing? Many of us practice getting frustrated, practice noticing how we’ve been wronged. But what if we practiced differently? Practiced being the connector when others want connection, practiced offering trust when others long to be trusted?

I know this isn’t easy. When we begin to practice new behaviors like trust, respect, and connection, people are sometimes suspicious. “What’s going on? What are you up to?” It feels like they don’t believe us.

It takes time and practice. Time and practice. Becoming who God is calling us to be takes a lifetime.

That’s why we need to practice together. Sometimes when I’m talking with someone who wants to do things differently, I invite them to practice with me. Practice saying what they really want to say. Practice responding in a different manner. And to keep it simple.

What if the church became that kind of place—where we can practice transformation together? Where “let’s practice this” becomes as common as “let’s pray about this”?

This is how we learn the rhythm of community. Not through perfection, but through practice. The practice of welcome. The practice of seeing each other freshly. The practice of believing that transformation is still possible—in ourselves, in others, in our communities.

Some days we’ll get it right. Some days we’ll slip back into old patterns. But we keep practicing, keep choosing the vision of what’s possible, keep embodying the faith that God’s power working in us can accomplish “exceedingly abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”

Sarah’s Daughter Now

Sarah’s daughter is twenty-seven now. She could carry on a conversation with you in Latin if you want to give it a whirl. She loves modern dance and going to the beach. She has a college degree and is now a doctor of physical therapy.

She freely says that home is here, that Sarah is mom. But she also occasionally ponders what she would have been doing if she hadn’t left China.

Sarah told me, “That part will always be evolving for both of us as long as we live.”

That’s it! Isn’t it? Always evolving. Always becoming. Even homecoming itself is not a fixed destination but an ongoing practice—learning to hold both the joy of belonging and the complexity of what might have been, the gratitude for what is and the wondering about what could have been different.

That’s the invitation of homecoming. Not just to return, but to participate in the ongoing creation of beloved community. To keep becoming, together. To let the questions remain questions while we practice love in the present tense.

Closing

Who are we now? Who are we becoming?

We are God’s children, still in the process of becoming all that God dreams for us. We are a community with the opportunity to practice seeing each other with fresh eyes, honoring who we’ve been while staying courageous about who we’re becoming. We are people practicing the art of love, forgiveness, and radical hospitality.

In this place, on this day, you are welcomed home—not because of what you’ve accomplished or how far you’ve traveled or how much you’ve figured out, but because you belong here.

And because God’s power working in you can accomplish exceedingly, abundantly far more than you can ask or imagine.

Welcome home. Your becoming is just beginning.

Preached at Bon Air United Methodist Church
October 12, 2025
Homecoming Sunday

Going back through time

listening to her stories

grateful to be here