The year isn’t quite over yet. But so far, we’ve experienced tremendous losses individually and as a community. Have you spent time counting your losses? Why would we do that? Acknowledging loss is one of the first steps toward healing. Losses need to be taken seriously. What would it look like for us individually (or us as a larger community) to grieve what we have lost?

Today’s episode features one of those great meandering conversations of the two pastors. As we enter the season of Advent, they share some of their traditions that are working and aren’t working, and talk about how tradition brings us comfort.

We are headed into a darker winter and the two pastors, like everyone else in the service or people business, are feeling the ache around us. It’s a conversation that seems like one we’ve had already but one we’ve never had today. So let’s keep talking.

What is sharpening you these days? If we are loving each other right, the two pastors say we should be feeling some 'ouches.' Relationships take adjusting. So what is sharpening you these days?

Iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens the wits of another. (Proverbs 27:17, NRSV)

The two pastors talk about having some extra space in their schedule to “leave room for the holy spirit”—especially in weeks like this one where wisdom is needed and often hard to find.

As voting finishes up this week, the two pastors talk about what drives our decisions, behaviors and choices. What does it look like for us to have love take the driver's seat?

So the pastors start talking about how Beth got mad at her dog, Sam. But as Michael and Beth are apt to do, they transition the conversation into how we move our anger or frustration toward compassion and reconciliation. Relationships are hard - with people and with puppies.

What starts as “what are you preaching?” turns into an exploration of “who we believe God to be” this side of the pandemic? The spiritual practices we once had often don’t work the same way anymore. How do we move forward with our changed selves and with God, whoever/whatever that is?

This week alone, sixty people died in New Jersey from the coronavirus. We would prefer to look away from suffering. And yet conversations about our vulnerability or the fragility of life are the richest conversations we can have with one another.

We have entered the season of Fall—starting anew in a radically different world: the fear, the tension, the discouragement, the grief. What is it that we want for one another? As pastors, Beth and Michael discuss what they want for us, “the called people of God.”