Artandicon's Blog

  • Holiday Gifts and Traditions

    In my family, we didn’t break out the seasonal decorations or fashions until Thanksgiving Day. My mother put her knitting hobby to good use one year and made Christmas sweaters for all of us. She practiced on mine, so I got the baggy sleeves and an oversized middle. At least she got her stitch gauge…

    artandicon

  • Icons for Holy Week

    As we approach the days of Holy Week, life can get busy for people of faith. For those in leadership roles, you likely don’t have time to read. That’s OK. This is a time for you to use your meditation and prayer time to rest in the presence of God’s Spirit. Palm Sunday, April 10,…

    artandicon

  • Rabbit! Rabbit! Welcome to April 2022

    What a difference a month makes! Only a few weeks ago, I was speaking with a rabbit pal, who was ground down by her constant caregiving in this pandemic world. She cares for elderly rabbits in a nursing home, a vulnerable population, plus she’s grieved the passing of several of her own family members lost…

    artandicon

  • Rabbit! Rabbit! Welcome to December!

    “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” my daddy was fond of saying. We often long for the “way things used to be,” as if the Golden Age of the past was the best of all times. Yet, that past often exists only in our memories, but not in the lived reality…

    artandicon

  • The Character of a Methodist

    Wesley’s Historic Teaching on Holiness John Wesley wrote extensively to teach the Methodists of his day the tenets of the faith. We teach seminarians the historic doctrines, but many think these are “dead ideas of a long ago world.” Wesley gave us 52 Standard Sermons and the Notes on the New Testament, both of which…

    artandicon

  • The DNA of Gods and Heroes

    Danaë was a princess of Argos in Greek mythology. Argos was an island kingdom ruled by Danae’s father, who had no sons to inherit his throne, but a prophecy foretold his fate: his grandson would kill him and rule in his place. To defy the gods, Danae’s father sealed her up in a prison so…

    artandicon

  • Generation to Generation: Learning to be Free

    “The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” ~~ John 8:35-36  With all the Paula Deen jambalaya on the airwaves lately about her treatment of African-Americans and her misplaced desire to have a…

    artandicon

  • The Butter Queen

    “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness,  we lie, and do not the truth…” ~~ 1 John 1:6  Oh, Paula Dean, the Butter Queen! Once you were everywhere seen, but now you just seem awfully mean. Or were you just good at hiding your true self until you got…

    artandicon

  • The Journey Never Ends

    “A highway shall be there and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people; no traveller, not even fools, shall go astray.”~~ Isaiah 35:8 All good things come to an end, but the ending is just the beginning of something new. This week a…

    artandicon

  • Leaving The Garden of Guilt and Shame

    “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”  ~~ Genesis 3:8  None of us have ever grown up in the Garden of Eden: we grew…

    artandicon