The Year of the Lord’s Favor

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments

“[Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah:] ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.'”

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled
in your hearing.” Your own words, Jesus,
amazing them with graceful speech.
Until they turned upon you.

Remind us once again of what is grace.
I’m told that grace is strength, is force.
I’m told that power is right, and might is good.
I’m told that what we want we take.

Where is the news that sounds good to the poor?
Where is the vision for the ones who will not see?
Where is the freedom for the ones who are oppressed?
Where are the prisoners released into the light?

You did not speak the words of grace alone.
You needled them, you did, O Christ, until they burst
in rage, and nearly did the work of Pilate three years
earlier, by casting you to break upon a rock.

O, can we learn the lesson that you tried to teach?
We claim your name but do not tread your ways.
We leave the poor uncomforted, we close our eyes
to the oppressed, and those we free are those who’ve flattered us.

May there be good news for the poor.
May there be vision which will pierce the shade.
May there be freedom for those who have been bound.
Bring quickly, Jesus, the favored year of the LORD.

A poem/prayer based on Luke 4:14-21, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year C, Third Sunday of the Epiphany.

The image is “The Rejection of Jesus in Nazareth” (“Prophets are not without honour, except in their hometown”); 18th-century tile panel by António de Oliveira Bernardes in the Igreja da Misericórdia, in Évora, Portugal, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97133284.

Story: Small Differences

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments

January 19, 2025

1 Corinthians 12:1-11
John 2:1-11

The akiapla’au is a small bird. It has a unique beak, with a short lower beak, and a longer top beak that hooks down in front of the lower beak. It may look odd, but the lower beak can drill into tree bark after bugs and grubs, and the top beak hooks them to draw them out.

If that seems strange, just imagine that you had to chase the chocolate chips through a cookie, and you might think a double-purpose beak sounds pretty good.

An akiapola’au is a small bird. It isn’t any bigger than a saffron finch or a yellow-beaked cardinal. There aren’t very many of them, either, perhaps about 1,900 here on Hawai’i Island. There aren’t any anywhere else in the world.

I think they’re pretty wonderful and pretty special.

A youngish akiapola’au, however, wasn’t certain about this. I don’t know whether he knew that birds like him live only on this one island, but I’m certain he knew there weren’t a lot of them around. Think about how you know so many of the people of Hilo, and how many of them you call “auntie” or “uncle.” After a couple of years, he knew pretty much every akiapola’au there was, and he called a lot of them “auntie” or “uncle.”

“There aren’t very many of us, and we’re very small birds,” he said to himself one day. “How will we ever make a difference in the world?” He had dreams, he did. He wanted to make the world better. He wanted someone else to benefit because he lived. He wanted to love the world somehow.

“But how?” he asked himself. “I’m too small to move anything bigger than a caterpillar with this beak of mine. And if we gathered all of us together and flapped our wings as hard as we could, what could we akiapola’au do but make a light breeze that the trade winds would blow away?”

It made him sad.

“Auntie,” he asked one day, “how can I make a difference?”

“What makes you think you don’t?” she asked.

“I’m too small to move anything,” he said, “and there aren’t enough of us together to make anything different.” Sadly, he dug out another little worm, hooked it with his upper bill, and ate it.

“What did you just do?” asked his auntie.

“Nothing,” he said, startled. “Well. I ate a worm.”

“Look at that tree over there,” said his auntie. “What do you see?”

“I see a sick tree,” said the younger akiapola’au. “It’s had so many caterpillars and worms that it’s fading. It might be dying.”

“What about this tree?” asked auntie.

“This tree is doing better,” he said.

“Why?”

“It doesn’t have so many worms and bugs,” he said.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because… I’m not sure. Is it because we’ve been eating them?”

“It is. And not just us. Other birds do the same. Between us, we’re helping this tree stay healthy.”

“But that’s just one tree,” he protested.

“I feed from lots of trees, and you know you do, too,” said his auntie. “That’s still a difference.

“You and I are small in the world,” she told him, “but these trees have better, stronger lives because of us. We make a difference for them, and they make a difference for us. For that matter, they make a difference for all the creatures of this forest. Our small difference contributes to everyone’s lives. You make the world a little better every day.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories ahead of time, but I tell them from memory supplemented by improvisation. The story you just read will not match the way I told it.

Photo of an akiapola’au (though it’s not a good one) by Eric Anderson.

Concerned

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 3 Comments

“And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come.'” – John 2:4

Now if I take a bird’s eye view of the world,
or if I try to see the Universe as from
the eye of its Creator, I have to ask,
What concern are we to You?

“What are humans that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?”

Other folk of other faiths discerned
their deities to be… not unconcerned,
but distant, focused on their own affairs,
but pleased by scent of sacrifice.

So when the hosts ran out of wine
what person would not ask, “Are we
concerned? We brought our contributions
to the feast. What more can we do now?”

How many deities would ask,
“What prayer is this? Do I make up
your deficits, the failures in your plans?
Take care of it yourselves, as you can do.”

As deity, as human being,
what else could Jesus say but this:
“This is not our concern. The things
I have to do come later and much larger.”

A mother’s love is such a funny thing.
One moment she protects her child
from senseless obligation, then the next
she thrusts them forward: “Go on, give.”

He said that they were not concerned,
but his mother thrust him forth,
and then he was concerned. They filled
the jars. They served the wondrous wine.

Was he concerned? He was, for host’s
embarrassment, but more for human souls
who languish in uncertainty and fright,
to lead them to a life beyond imagining.

“What are humans that you are mindful of them?” Still
we cannot fully clarify the poet’s ancient cry,
except to say, that Jesus is concerned, God is concerned,
the Holy Spirit is concerned:

For us.

A poem/prayer based on John 2:1-11, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year C, Second Sunday of the Epiphany.

The illustration is from JESUS MAFA. The Wedding at Cana, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48305 [retrieved January 17, 2025]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).

Story: Nene Students

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 1 Comment
A photo of a nene, a wild Hawaiian goose, standing by a pond facing away.

January 15, 2025
(for a meeting of the Hawai’i Conference Committee on Ministry)

Nene School was in session. There was a new teacher that year, but he was getting help from a more experienced nene. She had been his teacher some years before. And because he was new, he had a relatively small class. Just three students.

Two of them were siblings, a brother and sister. The third was immediately interested in Food Identification part of the curriculum – Nene School basically consists of Flight and Food. The new teacher thought he’d be a good student, but mostly he was hungry. Time after time the teacher would have to rush over as the student reached out for yet another inedible item.

It kept him hopping.

He hoped that the brother and sister would be good flight students, since they’d already learned to fly together. His hopes were dashed, however, the first time they took off for basic formation flying. Honks of “You’re took close!” and “Get away from me!” resounded over the rocks and forest. He could barely be heard over them to try to coach them into position. Eventually there was a collision, and the two bruised siblings settled down to the ground to continue their recriminations.

The teacher could feel his teacher’s eyes on the back of his head, watching him as his class turned into a full-fledged disaster – that’s a disaster with feathers on. Or fluttering down from the sky because they didn’t stay on.

This went on for a week, and things didn’t get better. The hungry young nene never seemed to listen or retain what he’d been told. The siblings fought on the ground, climbing, cruising, descending, and on the ground again. The watching teacher said nothing. The young teacher got desperate.

As the class ended with more flying feathers, more angry honking, and a certain amount of vomit from an ill-considered berry, he burst out in fury: “You are the worst nene I’ve ever met! You’ll never learn! I’m sorry you were ever hatched!”

Shocked, the students flew away.

He turned to find his teacher standing right behind him. He couldn’t read the look in her eyes. “What?” he challenged.

“I’m disappointed,” she said.

“I’m disappointed in them, too,” he growled.

“I’m disappointed in you,” she said.

“What?”

“Haven’t you noticed that the siblings have been carefully listening to every word you’ve said about finding food? Haven’t you noticed that they never ask you twice about it? That they’ve learned so much in just a week?”

He hadn’t noticed.

“Haven’t you noticed that the third one sticks right by you in flight? He was awkward the first day, but he’s been right off your wingtip ever since. Haven’t you noticed?”

He hadn’t noticed.

“When they come back tomorrow, what are you going to say?” she asked, and then left him to consider.

The next morning, the three students stood anxiously before their teacher. They almost hadn’t come back. The older nene had persuaded them to come.

“I’m very sorry for what I said yesterday,” he said. “I had no business saying any of that. You’re here to learn, and I haven’t been teaching you very well.”

“Youngster,” he said to the hungry student, “I want you to keep an eye on the brother and sister here. They’ve done really well at learning what’s good to eat and what’s not. You can trust what they do.”

“And you two,” he said to the siblings, “can learn a lot from this youngster here. He’s been keeping good formation on me since the second day. Watch him. He’ll show you what to do.”

I won’t tell you that things went absolutely smoothly after that – there were still ruffled feathers and feelings, and the hungry student only gradually gave up whatever looked good at the time – but I will say that the students learned. All the students. One of whom was the teacher.

by Eric Anderson

I wrote this story as the opening devotional for a meeting of the Hawai’i Conference UCC Committee on Ministry Chairs.

Story: The I’iwi Who Disliked Getting Wet

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments

January 12, 2025

Acts 8:14-17
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

She wasn’t vain, though she might have been. Her feathers ranged from deep black with white accents to the fiery orange-red that complimented her long curved beak. In short, she was an i’iwi, and those are feathers any bird would wear with pride.

Some birds are vain, and those birds might settle and resettle their feathers with their beak or their feet. They might avoid rainfall that would slick their feathers across their body, which can end up looking pretty sad and messy. Wet red feathers might look shiny and glossy, but they might also look dull and out of place. There are birds who would worry about that.

She wasn’t one of them. She kept herself neat because feathers in their places are more comfortable. She liked to greet other birds with some sense that she’d respected them by looking good. No, she wasn’t vain. But.

She didn’t like getting wet. She didn’t like it much at all.

Wet feathers might be glossy or they might be dull, but mostly she thought they were chilly and cold. And, well, wet. She didn’t like the sensation of drops pooling along her skin. Feathers are pretty good at shedding water, but they’re not as good as an umbrella or a raincoat. Eventually the rain seeps in, and she just didn’t like it.

“Yuck,” she said during one rainstorm. “I hate rain.”

A friend heard her complaint, which she’d made many times before. “You always say that,” he replied.

“I always hate rain,” she said. “Always.”

“Well, if you always hate rain,” said her friend, “have you ever thought of finding shelter?”

As it happens, she’d tried it. She’d tried trees with thick canopies of leaves. The rain got through. She’d tried gaps in the branches. They let water in, too. The saddest failure had been when she found a lava tube and settled there. To her horror, the rain poured in through the opening and flooded floor. Water rising from below, she thought, wasn’t any better than coming down from above. She told her friend so.

“Well, you can fly. Fly someplace without rain,” he told her, rather annoyed.

“All right. I will,” she said, and flew out into the rain.

Fortunately for her, she flew west across the center of the island toward Kona. I’m afraid she’d have found more rain, not less, here on the Hilo side. Sure enough, she found herself flying out from under the clouds as they exhausted their rain upon the slopes of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. Soon she flew over the sunny grasslands west of the mountains.

And she saw nothing to eat.

She flew back and forth, looking for ohi’a or mamane trees, and while she saw one or two, she certainly didn’t see a forest. It took a while for her to realize the truth: the trees she relied on relied in turn on rain. They needed the water that annoyed her, in order to provide her with the nectar that she needed.

Hungry, she turned back toward home, flying back beneath the clouds still shedding their rain. Back on the branch with her friend, she began sipping nectar from the damp flowers, with raindrops speckling her feathers.

“You’re back,” said her friend. “Didn’t you find sunshine?”

“I did,” she said, “but it turns out that rain isn’t so bad. At least the trees think so, and,” she paused to take another sip, “if they think so, I do, too.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Stories

I write these stories in full in advance, but I tell them from memory plus improvisation. What you have just read will not match the way I told it on Sunday.

Photo of an i’iwi by Eric Anderson.

Spirit and Fire

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / Leave a comment

Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. – Luke 3:21-22a

The water gently swirled about their legs
as John and Jesus stepped into the stream,
the echoes of John’s fierceness still
perceivable in those who stood upon the bank,
and those who dripped the water of forgiveness.

The water may be gentle, but the fire promised
by the Baptist came descending. Like a dove,
indeed, but doves are sharp of claw
and though they promise coming home
they promise nothing gentle on the way.

The river’s soft embrace receded, puddling on
the riverbank. The Holy Spirit’s fire ignited
in the eyes beneath the water-speckled lashes.
The one who had, with hardly any word,
descended peacefully, has risen purposefully.

Was there a word for John? Who knows.
Perhaps a hand to brush the drying skin
which shortly would be washed again
with washing someone else. The fire drove
him from the water to the wilderness.

O Gentle Spirit, how do humans dare
to call You gentle, source of prophets’ words,
apostles’ energy, and martyrs’ blood?
Indeed the Baptist said it true, that though he washed
with water, You baptize your followers with fire.

A poem/prayer based on Luke 3:15-17, 21-22, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year C, Baptism of the Lord.

The image is a mosaic of the Baptism of Jesus in the Arian Baptistery, Ravenna, Italy (late 5th early 6th century). Photo by Flying Russian – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21723466.

Story: The Sweet Bug Mystery

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments
An 'apapane (a red bird with black wings) feeding at a red ohi'a flower.

January 5, 2025

Jeremiah 31:7-14
John 1:1-18

The ‘elepaio has the reputation for being the most curious bird of the forest, but once there was an ‘apapane who was as curious as nearly any ‘elepaio. He had questions about everything. Why were his feathers brown when he was younger, and why did they turn red? Why did some trees have blossoms and others didn’t? Why did the days grow shorter and longer again?

He found answers to some of his questions, and he didn’t find answers to others of his questions. He never gave up asking them, though, and he never gave up trying to find out.

One morning, while enjoying a late morning snack of bugs, it suddenly occurred to him: Why do bugs taste sweet?

I’m not sure that bugs would taste sweet to you or to me, but the bugs he was eating that day definitely tasted sweet to him. He hadn’t thought about it before, but why should a bug taste sweet? Shouldn’t they be salty, or tangy, or something like that? Why sweet?

He asked around to see if anyone else knew, but nobody did. They hadn’t thought about it, and they weren’t all that interested. “If they taste good, that’s all that matters,” said one of his friends, and didn’t help any further. So the ‘apapane decided to watch and see what sweet bugs ate.

What they ate, he discovered, was a lot of things that he also ate. Those bugs ate fruit. They ate ohi’a nectar. They even ate other bugs who were eating sweet fruit and nectar. The sweetness of what they ate was being carried along to make them at least somewhat sweet.

“That’s amazing!” he said to himself. “But now the question is: Why is fruit sweet? Why is nectar sweet?”

Again, he went to friends and family to ask, and again they didn’t know. “It tastes good; that’s all that matters,” said the same friend. So he began to watch the trees, to see what they did to produce sweet fruit and flowers.

I’m afraid that being an ‘apapane rather than a human being meant that he never did learn the answer to that. He could see that the trees spread their leaves to the sun, but he couldn’t see the way that the green of the leaves combined water from the roots with energy of the sun to make the sweetness that made the tree grow. He couldn’t see that sweet sap being concentrated in the flowers to make nectar, and later in the fruits to feed the seeds of later trees. People have microscopes and chemistry equipment and lots of years asking and answering these questions. He didn’t.

He had to admit that he wouldn’t answer the question of sweet nectar, at least until he learned something new. For him, sweet nectar would remain a sweet mystery.

It never stopped him from enjoying it, though.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in advance, but I tell them from memory and improvisation. There will be differences between the story I’ve written and the story I told.

Photo of an ‘apapane feeding from an ohi’a blossom by Eric Anderson.

Light in a Stable

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments

“The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” – John 1:9

The true light may now be at hand,
but the light is lit by flickering flame
and smoky wick. I watch that light
with anxious eye, for fear it spread
its burning oil on the straw below.

The light unsteady served to hide
the dark green sticky contents of
that first cloth barrier, wrapped
inexpertly by unaccustomed fingers round
the infant’s flailing hips,

But did not muffle his fierce cries
of outrage testifying that the light
has lungs! Re-swaddled, he subsides,
and sleeps re-laid into the feeding trough,
while grateful stable denizens rest, too.

The midwife gone, the man and I
trade naps, and watch, and wait
for his next cry. Will he be hungry?
Dirty? Lonely? Or just angry that
the borrowed cloth moves roughly on his skin?

“The light shines in the darkness,” they will write,
and I suppose it does. It murmurs sleepily,
then coos a moment, then subsides.
The crude light wavers at the breeze,
and shadows waver on incarnate light asleep.

I am too weary to compose a poem;
I ache in every muscle, every bone.
I cannot help but think that this poor babe,
in manger laid, could shine so bright
this stable would be taken for a star.

For now, the light is dimmed,
and in its dimness I, at least, can see
that lovelight shines most clearly here,
in common human form, and in
the dark.

A poem/prayer based on John 1:1-18, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year C, Second Sunday after Christmas Day.

The image is The Nativity, a section of the 13th century altar frontal of St. Mary of Avia Church in Bergueda, Catalonia, Spain, by an unknown artist. The frontal itself is in the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona. Photo by Enfo – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21384531.

2024: Birds and Music

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 3 Comments

After three years of living a very different existence, in the midst of and in the decline of a global pandemic, I found much of it rather exhausting. 2024 felt like playing “catch up” on projects and plans that had been deferred while managing COVID-19. Frankly, that wasn’t easy.

Church of the Holy Cross was able to give energy and focus to things we hadn’t. We resumed welcoming people into membership, and we launched an Open and Affirming committee. We continued to live stream worship via YouTube, since it serves both people who live at a distance and people who cannot attend worship. Video did not replace people in a sanctuary, and it won’t. It’s a different experience, and still worthwhile.

I completed my service as Chair of the Hawai’i Conference Council in June, presiding over an in-person ‘Aha Pae’aina for the first time. The meeting included a lengthy debate over an issue that continues to trouble the Conference: what financial support the Conference should give toward a position in one of the Associations. During my four years, the delegates chose both to fund it and not to fund it by narrow margins. I’m pretty sure that it will take more time and discussion before people consider it resolved.

To my sorrow, I found myself returning to the Chair of the Hawai’i Island Association Committee on Ministry, from which I’d stepped down when elected as Conference Council Chair. I returned to the Committee in May in great part because of the shortage of ordained ministers on Hawai’i Island. During the summer our Chair, the Rev. Larry Walter, died. The Association asked me to fill in, and then elected me to continue the work in the fall. The Committee was further marked by tragedy when one of the lay members, David Williams, died unexpectedly in October.

I continued to make a lot of music. I wrote eight songs in 2024, and all eight are available at 2024: The Songs. The instrument count remained the same (this year’s major expense category was cameras). I sang the spring and fall seasons of the Big Island Singers, which was both great fun and a huge amount of work. The fall concert included my solo performance of “Creature of this World,” which is now two years old. I continued the weekly “Song from Church of the Holy Cross” and the monthly Community Sings. I decided to reduce my solo Community Concerts, however, to four times a year. As the year closed, the musical community of east Hawai’i made its way to Church of the Holy Cross the sing Handel’s Messiah together.

I continued to write weekly LectionPrayers here on my blog, and also contributed to The Living Psalms project of the UCC. Preparing for worship I wrote liturgical materials, sermons, and stories. In the fall, I was welcomed onto the Board of the UCC Media Justice Ministry, my first appointment to a national ministry of the denomination.

I didn’t have a lot of visitors this year – and after welcoming my brother by getting a stomach bug and my cousin by having my water heater break I don’t blame them. Ben and Dee Anderson (no relation) came to Hawai’i in February and Ben did a dialogue sermon with me in church that Sunday.

Kilauea summit, April 1, 2024.

My primary outlet this year (and the most expensive) has been photography. I returned to many of my favorite subjects in 2024, including flowers, sunrises, the occasional sunset, landscapes, and natural shapes. A couple of my favorite images this year were black-and-white. I gave a lot of my attention, however, to birds. I can no longer claim I am not a birder.

Selected Favorite Birds 2024 - 1 of 59

I not only pointed my camera at birds, I made plans to go photograph them. Rather foolishly, I promised a friend I’d take a picture of a bird I hadn’t seen in eight years (the i’iwi, a distinctive Hawaiian honeycreeper with a distinctive long curved orange beak). I got a photo, and I even liked it. I even saw (and got a bad photo of) a bird I hadn’t even heard of, the ‘akiapola’au, thanks to two birders who were seeking it by the trail.

Next year, I plan to spend some time on other islands, and yes, I’ll bring my camera.

I didn’t do a lot of traveling in 2024. I made three trips to O’ahu as part of my Conference work, and flew to the northeast in July/August to visit my more-scattered family in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York. I could have added Maine to that list, but I spent too much time in the rental car as it was. With driving being my primary activity, my photos tended to be of people I love, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I will say that the day Paul Bryant-Smith and I kayaked down a river in New York State was great fun and amazing birding – I saw great blue herons and bald eagles veery closely – but fortunately for my camera, I didn’t bring it along to share my dips in the creek.

2025 will bring something I’ve been waiting for this year: the second sabbatical of my career. Expect to see less new writing, as I’ve got a project for the time, but also expect to see some more photographs.

I suspect that a number of them will be of birds.

DSC_0003

2024: The Songs

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments
My Kala six string ukulele, Guild twelve string guitar, Martin six string guitar, and Kala four string ukulele (photo from October 2023).

I wrote eight songs in 2024, one more than the previous year but still less than the dozen songs I wrote each of the pandemic years 2021 and 2022. I sang six of them in live streams, one for the 2024 Easter recording, and one was… well. I was asked to write a song about performing with the Big Island Singers, and so I sang it at the party following the closing concert in November. Someone took some video, but it didn’t include the entire song. At the request of one of the “Dougs” (the director and accompanist both are named Doug), I recorded it to be included here.

Shine, Star, Obscuring Light

First performed January 10, 2024.

This is an Epiphany song, arising from the curious way that a star heralded the birth of Jesus when public proclamation of a Messiah’s birth was deeply dangerous. Herods, both ancient and modern, are vicious. People have found that putting lights on an object can, in fact, hide it from view.

First Denial

First performed on February, 28, 2024.

This song is based on “Simon Peters’s First Denial,” a poem I wrote as part of my “lectionprayer” series (prayers I write based on one of the texts for the coming Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary). As you’ll hear in the introduction above, a friend commented on the poem asking if it was set to music. A week later, it was.

In the Silence

First performed on March 27, 2024.

Written for Holy Week, the song goes to the hard place of waiting for something bad to happen. We all know its strain, and of course so did Jesus as he prayed in the garden, knowing that the soldiers approached.

Tell Me to Turn Around

First performed for What I’m Thinking the week after Easter, April 2, 2024.

Inspired by the meeting of Mary Magdalene with the risen Jesus in John 20, the song begins just before Mary turns around to see him.

Twelve Years and a Moment

First performed on June 30, 2024.

I wrote this based on the healings of the woman with a hemorrhage and the raising of Jairus’ daughter in Mark 5:21-43. I think it also shows some melodic and harmonic ideas that have dominated my songwriting much of the year. Translation: I think it sounds familiar.

I’ve Got a Jar of Flour

Performance from October 23, 2024.

I like to write a song for Vacation Bible School. It doesn’t always happen, and sometimes when it does, they’re pretty lighthearted. That isn’t true of this one, based on the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath in 1 Kings 17.

We are the Big Island Singers

I sang both the spring and fall seasons of the Big Island Singers, a great group led by Doug Albertson and accompanied by Doug Howell. Another member of the asked me to write a song about the experience, and this is the result. I’m afraid it’s full of inside jokes, but choral singers, directors, and accompanists may recognize some of the challenges and the joys of this kind of music.

I made this recording in December, 2024.

Christmas Filled with Christ

First performed on December 20, 2024.

Over the last few years I’ve taken on some songwriting goals, usually around major holidays of the Church year. 2024 included one for Epiphany (as noted above; I also sang “Shine, Star, Obscuring Light” during this December 20 concert), one for Holy Week, one for Easter, and yes, one for Christmas. I’d seen enough inspirational messages about keeping Christ in Christmas by doing the things Christ asked us to do that I decided to include it in a song.