by Nola Smith It all started when I read an article in the April 2025 Bold Connections e-newsletter from Women of the ELCA regarding a trip to Arusha and Meru, Tanzania, through their Global Education Travel program. In my retirement from nursing, I was looking for new ways to serve my faith community. I […]
What Scripture tells us about God’s love. Listen to the September 2019 Podcast issue. http://traffic.libsyn.com/boldcafelife/Cafe-09-2019.mp3
by Sarah Carson We have long known that conversation doesn’t just happen with language. So if prayer is a way to enter into conversation with God, doesn’t it follow that God might be open to communicating in the vast and varied ways humans are able to listen, understand, and respond? Just as two friends might […]
by Sarah Carson When I was a freshman in college, my roommate asked me to go with her to a popular new church in town. It was the mid-2000s, and I was used to getting dressed up for church on Sundays, singing hymns out of a hymnal, and listening to a preacher explain some five-point […]
by Dr. Crystal L. Hall Then Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. He said to them, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money—not […]
by Dr. Crystal L. Hall August can be to the calendar year what Sunday night is to the week. With the impending end of the weekend, it’s easy to experience dread as your thoughts turn to work. You start adding items to your to-do list. Or worrying about an impending project deadline. Or beating yourself […]
by Kamila Gutierrez My earliest memories of God are of imagining God as a teddy bear in the sky, with large black button eyes and a little red bow tie. The diminutive of God in Spanish is Diosito, which sounds like the word for teddy bear: osito.I have always thought of God as my best […]
In her famous book on creativity, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron writes, “Creativity is a spiritual endeavor. This does not mean we have to subscribe to someone else’s view of God and the order of things … we will flourish more as we honor the spiritual side of our own beings.” Honoring “the spiritual side […]
by the Rev. Celeste Kennel-Shank Genesis 1: 11–13, 29–30 Plants are a gift from God. Most of us aren’t accustomed to thinking of them that way. But it’s there in Genesis. God creates plants of various kinds and calls them good. After creating animals and other creatures with the breath of life in them, God […]
by the Rev. Celeste Kennel-Shank Gardening as a spiritual practice, caring for particular pieces of earth and all that grows on them, connects me with creation. It opens up the agricultural world of scripture to me in a way that would otherwise be impossible for a lifelong city dweller. Though my gardens are at the […]