Collette Broady Grund

We are learning how to be the church while physically distanced from each other in these days of COVID-19, and I have heard so many clergy and lay people lamenting the impossibility of communion. To feed that deep sacramental hunger, I wrote this baptismal remembrance for my congregation to use this week, and I hope […]

Ash Wednesday 2020 Spiritual Practices Series: Confession Mark 9:30-37 This year during Lent, we are focusing on spiritual practices, taking one traditional faith practices of Christian community each week. And we’re not just going to talk about these practices, we are actually going to practice. So if you need a moment to prepare yourself for […]

If Marrett were alive and aware of how negative the space inside my head is these days, he’d recommend a daily gratitude practice. But, because he’s not, I just can’t get to gratitude most days. Instead, I’ve developed this sad little game I play at the end of each day, which is possibly a step […]

I miss who I used to be: someone who believed in one love for your whole life, an overly optimistic Pollyanna who could find the silver lining in any situation, someone whose life was simply… SIMPLE. I know that simplicity was always an illusion, one largely supported by the massive privilege I’ve been afforded by […]

A sermon on Mark 4 A few notes about parables before I really get started: First, there is no one right way to interpret a parable, so please don’t expect me to tell you exactly what this or any parable means or doesn’t mean. Jesus tells us himself that understanding his parables isn’t going to […]

At my church’s Wednesday bible study this morning, our text was Acts 24, the eerily parallel account of Paul’s trial before the Roman governor and high priest. He’s on trial, it seems, for his insistence on the resurrection. And not just the resurrection of Jesus, which he proclaims, but about a Way of living a […]

We are in the book of God’s prophet Hosea this week, about a hundred years after Elijah’s story from last week. Hosea lives in the northern Kingdom of Israel, likely the distant descendant of those who revolted against King Rehoboam in our scripture from two weeks ago. And from that moment when Jeroboam built the […]

What happens to us after we die? If someone had asked me that 4 months ago, I would’ve given vague but scriptural answers along the lines of the heavenly visions in Revelation, and John chapter 14. We go to the place prepared for us, a place separate from earth (though not entirely) which will one […]

The blackbirds beckoned me toward the woods, reminding me of the autumns we spent under their myriad voices, flocked together to signal the change of season. I was going anyway, with the confluence of All Saints’ Day and Deer Opener, my first as an actual widow, rather than the jokingly named Hunting Widow. But the […]