by erinrobinsonhall@gmail.com | Apr 3, 2023 | Prayers, Reflections, Uncategorized |
They held palm branches. Little hands, raised high among the gathered people held symbols of peace and protest. We wanted them to walk. We sang along as they enacted the gospel story. Palm Sunday tradition had them marching and laying their branches at the foot of a reasonably-sized cross. The children of our church waving palm branches. We read the scripture about people who marched with palms. “When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, ‘Who is this?’” A city in turmoil reaches my heart today. One week ago, I was meeting on Zoom with my team, who calls Nashville home. My friend Eileen got a text from her daughter and froze. “It’s a school shooting.” Silence fell. A pause that held the question we parents ask these days: Did this latest shooting reach my child? She breathed and we realized, not this one. A school nearby, down the road. We learned that another team member has family in The Covenant School. They escaped, not physically harmed. Fear, anxiety, and grief washed through us. Within hours, my social media feeds filled with ads for bullet-proof notebooks and classroom walls that transform into bunkers. Bullet-proof barriers for sale, the commodification of our nightmares. The market is ready to respond. Stock prices on guns shoot up, while I stifle an honest Lenten confession: I want the power to protect my family. I need something in my hand so no harm can touch my children. One week later, a walk out is planned. At 10:13 am, the time the school shooting began, thousands of students across Nashville walked out....
by erinrobinsonhall@gmail.com | Aug 27, 2021 | Prayers, Reflections |
Yesterday, we said goodbye. Our family has made a home with the church where my husband has been the Senior Pastor for many years. The time to say goodbye to that place has arrived. My husband and I wrapped up our heartache and pain from this season and set it down for an hour. We picked up stickers, bubbles, a card, and some markers. We prepared a litany of goodbye for our children. They needed space to understand this change. They know that Daddy is shifting to a new space to work. They have a hundred questions. We do too. But we have shielded them. I will not have them experience the church hurt that we know. We only want them to know that God loves them, that wholeness is worth seeking, that our family believes in justice and care for all people. They needed time to stand in their classrooms, their playground and their sanctuary. And remember. We took our little paper hearts, and shared memories – a sticker for each special memory or person. We lit a candle in each room. They have a hunch there will be candles in our next church, too. We blew bubbles to embody our prayers for our friends. We ran and jumped on every inch of this second home called church. My five year old laid down, arms outstretched, on the chancel. “I’m giving the church a hug goodbye.” My oldest son was a toddler when we came here. As we walked around yesterday, he kept writing his name on any whiteboard he could find: LJH was here. I get it,...
by erinrobinsonhall@gmail.com | May 6, 2020 | Prayers, Resources, Uncategorized |
It’s a gift to be able to share space with people who just get it. My friendEileen Campbell-Reed always offers me that space. We can shorthand conversations about things that matter deeply to the practice of ministry, and I know that we hear each other. That’s one of the reasons I am grateful to be part of 3MMM. These episodes offer a space for ministers to name the parts of ministry that are not easy to explore. One of those spaces, for me, is grief. Specifically, grief around motherhood. For a long time, that grief was marked by loneliness. My husband and I experienced many years of fertility treatments before our son was born in 2012. Followed by more seasons of infertility treatments, miscarriage and adoption loss. Mother’s Day has not always been easy. I am not alone in that grief. We know that 1 in 8 couples will experience infertility. Which means someone in your circle of friends. Someone in your family. Someone in your pews. Maybe someone in your pulpit. Chances are, they don’t want to tell you all the details of their grief around infertility treatments, miscarriage or infant loss. So much of this is extremely intimate and, frankly, makes no sense if you have not had to wrangle the emotions and fees and calendars and weight of this kind of loss. Those who know fertility grief know the wails of failed hope, and they walk into worship spaces where hope is spoken, sung and claimed. It’s a striking chord, and often jarring. Which is why we sing each other through it. At our first “Hannah...
by erinrobinsonhall@gmail.com | Apr 20, 2019 | Prayers, Reflections |
At dinner with friends the other night I got to explain one of my very favorite Easter traditions: flowering the cross. It’s a true Easter moment for me. Some people say Easter happens when they sing at a sunrise service or say Hallelujah. For me, it’s when a chicken wire cross fills with flowers. Probably because it’s so communal and sensory and all those other churchy words. And I just love that there is no way to pattern out what this display will look like. Everyone is told to bring their own flower, so you may have huge daffodils or store-bought roses or scrawny looking “daisies” that we all know are weeds. You can try to have some easy carnations there for people who forgot their own, but like the Church itself there will always be one obnoxious, mis-matched blossom shoved in there. That’s what makes it beautiful. One year there was a gigantic, stubborn tulip. It was shoved onto the cross by a frustrated, heartsick woman. It slowly became surrounded by wildflowers and lilies, the whole thing processed into the sanctuary during a choir anthem that sounded like the skies opened to heaven. But it didn’t start out that way. That tulip showed up on that flower cross because I showed up at church at 6:00 am that morning. Our family had been in a season of struggle: everyday frustrations, tough moments of ministry. And infertility grief. But life doesn’t stop for liturgical seasons, and Easter did not go easy on us that year. It hurt. My husband and I had welcomed a rainy Good Friday that seemed...
by erinrobinsonhall@gmail.com | Apr 19, 2019 | Prayers, Reflections |
Today is Good Friday. I’m remembering a Friday a few years ago. My husband and I learned some heartbreaking news that a friend, a young woman, had reached the end of her life. Her three children gathered for goodbyes and last moments. Everyone wept. A few hours later, we also learned that our friends had welcomed a baby girl into the world. Death and also life, in that one day. I wrote a letter to this precious baby girl as a gift for her to keep, as her birth story begins on Good Friday. Today, I am remembering this letter as I worry for friends who received a frightening diagnosis, and pray for another friend who weeps for her lost loved one. I believe my friend Elizabeth, who reminds us, “We cannot get to Easter without Good Friday.” I am ready to get to Easter. But we can pause at Good Friday first. “Letter to a Baby Girl Born on Good Friday” Dear one, We have waited for you, hoped for you. Your mama, daddy, grandparents, cousins, family, and friends can’t wait to see you and say that because you are here, this is surely a good day We woke up this morning glad that we can mark this day as the one that brought more joy into the world. We know how we have done Good Friday in the past, remembering the darkness, remembering the words that we have chiseled down to neat phrases we can handle: I thirst. My God. It is finished. But it isn’t. Not for you, beautiful girl. It is just beginning. And...
by erinrobinsonhall@gmail.com | Apr 17, 2019 | Prayers, Reflections |
John 12:20-26 If it dies, it bears much fruit. If we let it go, it lives. Let it fall. These words took my breath away last spring. My friend Kimberly sang them, over a quiet chapel. About a dozen people gathered, mostly women and just a couple of men. We gathered there for a “Hannah Service.” Our church hosted this unique space for worship and reflection for people who grieved around Mother’s Day. People who had experienced infertility, miscarriage, or adoption loss, and people who experienced the loss of a child or parent were invited. The whole idea was to offer sacred space to grieve. As we planned this service, we were unsure who would attend. My friend Rachel and I had both experienced grief. Between the two of us, we knew the sorrow of infertility, miscarriage and loss. We also knew that church is sometimes the last place we give ourselves permission to feel. We planned the service knowing what a healing thing it is to bring real feelings into sacred space. We were almost surprised when people showed up. Many were people we had not met before. A few shared that they were in the middle of infertility treatments. Some were silent. One woman explained to me that her young child died last year. “I can’t go to church anymore, she said. But I thought I could come to this.” We spoke about anger, fear, and sorrow. We sang. As an act of remembrance, we planted small bulbs into little planters. Through tears, we dug into the dirt. We listened to Kimberly sing: “Have you been trying...
