 In our dining room window, there hangs a circular stained glass piece made by a dear friend of mine, Rev. Ellis Arnold. It's beautiful–and it holds a secret. Every single piece of glass in it is clear.
What appears purple in the photograph–and sometimes blue, sometimes green or pink with a kind of glow, sometimes nearly invisible–is actually trichroic glass. It catches and bends light so that color emerges depending on the angle, the time of day, the source of illumination. The color is never fixed. It changes. Ellis is one of the creative people I'll be spending time with during my upcoming sabbatical. They've promised to teach me how to make simple stained glass, and I find myself drawn to that invitation for reasons that go far beyond learning a new skill. For me, there is something deeply spiritual about paying attention to light. About slowing down enough to notice the way beauty shifts depending on perspective, season, and illumination. Something that speaks in ways that words never quite can. I wonder if that's true of people too. I think there are parts of us that remain hidden until something illuminates them: grief, joy, courage, tenderness, creativity, resilience. Sometimes it takes loss for those things to become visible. Sometimes it takes love. Sometimes rest. Sometimes another human being seeing us clearly enough that something inside us finally begins to glimmer again. Maybe that's part of what spiritual life actually is after all: becoming people who know how to receive light–and hold onto it when it comes. I believe each and every one of us carry light inside us. Every act of kindness received and passed on. Every moment of genuine awe. Every time we chose softness instead of cynicism. Every grief that deepened us instead of hardening us. Every experience of being loved when we felt unlovable. It all leaves something behind. Like light caught in glass. In recent weeks–both during worship and in blogs–I’ve talked a bit about the wonderful and strange gift of sabbatical. For me, it means stepping away from the rhythms of ministry that have shaped my days for years–the meetings, the preparing, the showing up. It means sitting beside people like Ellis who spend their lives paying attention to light and texture and beauty, and being reminded that the world cannot be reduced to efficiency or explained in a bullet point. But sabbatical doesn’t belong only to me. I think y’all are also being invited into something during these months. Not the same thing–you're not stepping away from your lives and your work. But maybe there is a quieter invitation here: to notice what has been buried beneath the noise. To let something in you catch the light again. Many of us have spent a long time in survival mode. Tightened. Defended. Distracted. The light is still there–but it can become hard to see beneath all the layers of exhaustion and doing and performing. Then something happens. A conversation. A piece of music. A quiet morning. A stained glass window catching the sun at just the right angle–and suddenly something inside us shines again for reasons we cannot fully explain. Not because the light was newly created. But because it was finally given a way to emerge. The mystic and activist Howard Thurman once wrote that “there is something in every one of us that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in ourselves.” And I can’t help but think that the most genuine parts of us are often the places where light has entered deeply enough to remain. Not untouched places–transformed places. I’m not going to pretend I know exactly what sabbatical will look like for you or for me. I’m fairly certain that sabbatical isn't magic. That rest won’t always feel restful. And that light–no matter how much any of us want it to–won’t always show up on our schedules. But I believe it shows up all the same. And I am trusting that when it does it will touch our souls so deeply that there is no way we will be the same. The Celtic Christian tradition has always understood something that our efficiency-obsessed world keeps trying to make us forget: that the Light we seek is not far off. It is not something we have to earn or manufacture or perform our way into. It is already here–already in us. It is the same Light that sparked creation. It is the same Light that the darkness has never overcome. And it is the same Light that flickers in every act of tenderness and every moment of honest grief and every time someone chose to love when they could have walked away. That is the Light I'm praying for us. Not a light that fixes everything or makes us shine on command–but the slow, quiet work of transformation. The kind that doesn't announce itself. The kind that just–changes us, when we are finally still enough to receive it. Just like that trichroic glass. On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa  This Sunday Mother’s Day shows up on our calendars. And Father’s Day won’t be far behind next month on June 21st. Over the past 6 years with you all here at St. Paul, I’ve gotten more than a few questions about why I haven’t planned something specifically tailored to both holidays during worship on their respective Sundays–or really even mentioned the holidays at all from the pulpit.
The truth is, the Church and these holidays have a relationship that really is not as simple as some would have us believe. Or to say it like the relationship status on Facebook status says it: It’s complicated. But before we start unpacking all of that, let’s first pause for a bit of history. The first Mother’s Day in the United States wasn’t a brunch holiday or a flower giveaway. It was a worship service. It came out of the work of women who were organizing for public health, tending to communities devastated by war, and calling for peace in a world that kept breaking itself apart. It was rooted in grief. In justice. In the stubborn belief that care matters in a world that often forgets that it does. Father’s Day followed later, also beginning in church, often connected to loss and remembrance. It didn’t even become a national holiday until decades after Mother’s Day. These days started in sacred spaces—but not as sentimental celebrations of perfect families. They started as ways of telling the truth about love and loss and responsibility in a complicated world. And then, over time, they got… cleaned up. As so many things tend to do. The holidays became simpler. Easier to market. Easier to manage. Easier to fit into a worship service without anyone feeling too uncomfortable. But that simplicity has come at a cost. Because in any given pew, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are far more complicated than carnations, barbecue grills, and narrow views of parenthood blessed from the pulpit would lead us to believe. These days hold grief for people whose parents have died. They stir up complicated relationships—estrangement, absence, harm. They ignore that choosing not to become parents is also a sacred choice, and one that has no holiday on our calendars or section in the greeting card aisle. They press on the quiet ache of those who wanted to be parents and aren’t. They overlook the reality that many people are parenting in ways that don’t fit a neat category. They ignore the truth that family, for many of us, has had to be rebuilt, redefined, or chosen. But there’s another layer to contend with here as well: Mother’s Day and Father’s Day reinforce a gender binary that does not hold the fullness of who we are as humans. And yes—some will read this and write it off as “woke.” But what we’re really talking about is whether the church is willing to tell the truth about the people with whom we share space and community–both inside these walls and beyond them. Because we know people who don’t fit the categories of “mother” or “father”. People who have given birth and don’t identify as women. People who are parenting outside of “traditional” roles altogether. We know that life simply isn’t that tidy. So perhaps a church–particularly one that is Open and Affirming–might think twice about uncritically centering “mothers” and “fathers” as fixed, universal identities. Because doing so doesn’t just miss people—it erases them in some fundamental ways. Church–at its best–is supposed to be a place where people are seen—not squeezed into categories that don’t fit. And this isn’t just a cultural issue. It’s a theological one. The gospel itself refuses to reduce family to something simple or biological. Jesus didn’t spend his time reinforcing traditional family structures. He expanded them. Disrupted them. Reimagined them. Jesus built community out of people who were not related by blood. He centered relationships that were chosen, not assumed. He made belonging bigger than what any one definition could hold. Which, for me, at least, means that the question for us as a community of faith isn’t whether we acknowledge Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. The question is: What story are we telling when we do? Are we telling a story about perfect families that don’t actually exist? Or are we telling the truth about the ways love shows up—messy, complicated, hard-earned, and real? At St. Paul, we work hard to hold tensions and lean into both paradox and mystery. We are not generally a people who are interested in pretending that things are simple–even if they seem like it on paper. Perhaps my mistake has been thinking that simply not acknowledging that such complexities are present would make them any less complicated. Perhaps this year we can try something new. Perhaps this year–this Sunday–this Mother’s Day and later on Father’s Day–we can hold the complexities honestly. We can name the gratitude where it’s real. We can make space for grief where it’s present. We can honor the many ways people nurture, protect, and care for life. We can refuse to pretend that all families look the same—or should. And we–just as Jesus did–can keep widening the circle. Because if these days began as acts of truth-telling—about love, loss, and responsibility—then maybe our call now is not to make them prettier–or ignore them altogether. Maybe our call is to make them truer. To tell the truth about the families we come from. The families we’ve lost. The families we’ve chosen. And the ways we are still, all of us, learning how to care for one another in a world that desperately needs more care. That’s the kind of church we’re trying to be here at St. Paul. Not one that avoids the hard edges. But one that trusts that truth—spoken with care—can hold all of us…even if the truth is somewhat complicated. On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa  Mornings are my absolute favorite time of day. I wake up at 5am, walk my dogs, and come home to some absolutely perfect cups of coffee, if I do say so myself. The world is dark and still and quiet–like a secret that’s all mine–and I soak it in. Sometimes with a podcast on in my earbuds, sometimes NPR or an audio book, sometimes piano music, and sometimes–more often than not lately–no earbuds at all. Choosing instead to let the beauty of the morning–and the sights and sounds of the changing of the guard from night shift creatures to day shift creatures–be the soundtrack to my morning.
One morning not too long ago, I was about midway through my morning walk when the light of my headlamp fell onto something unexpected. It was a message on the sidewalk in front of me–written in sidewalk chalk–that read simply, “You are beautiful.” Struck by the small but powerful declaration, I took a moment, pulled out my phone, snapped a quick picture, and kept walking. But I couldn’t stop thinking about that message in the dark. “You are beautiful.” How short and sweet, and how terribly complex all at the same time. It’s the kind of message that takes some softening into–especially in days like these and a world like ours that seems determined to harden us against it. I think most of us have spent a lifetime believing that beauty is something we earn. We tell ourselves we’ll be beautiful when. When the number on the scale drops. When we find the right partner. When we get the promotion. When we finally feel successful enough, accomplished enough, admired enough. When life looks the way we thought it would. Then—and only then—will the message will be true. The only problem with that logic is that the finish line keeps moving. You reach one milestone, and another one appears just a little farther down the road. You lose the weight, but now you’re supposed to maintain it. You find the relationship, but now you’re supposed to make it perfect. You get the recognition, but now you’re supposed to do even more. It never quite arrives. And somewhere along the way, we start to believe that beauty is conditional. That it depends on performance. That it belongs to other people more than it belongs to us. That it’s more of a “girl thing” than a “guy thing” so it’s not really a message that speaks to everyone. But what if the message wasn’t a goal? What if it wasn’t some next thing that we have to hustle for? What if it is just a FACT? You are beautiful. Already. Right now. Exactly as you are. Not because you’ve arrived or because you’ve fixed everything. Not because you finally checked all the boxes. But because you exist. And your existence is the very image of the Divine. And that’s enough. This isn’t just a sidewalk message, it’s a message written into some of the most powerful words in scripture (in my opinion). In the Beatitudes, Jesus blesses people just as they are, exactly where they are. He is especially blessing those who never seem to receive blessings otherwise. Who never seem to catch a break. Who may not be happy with who they are or have it all figured out where they are but who are loved and blessed by God all the same. Remember, that message was written on a public sidewalk. Out in the open. Where anyone could read it. Where it didn’t belong to one person or one group or one kind of life. The message is for everyone. It’s for the person who feels invisible. For the one who is exhausted. For the one who is carrying grief that nobody else can see. For the one who looks in the mirror and only notices what’s wrong. And yes—it’s even for the neighbor who always blows grass onto your sidewalk when they mow. It’s for the driver who just cut you off in traffic. It’s for that one person who always seems to get under your skin. The message is for them too. Not because they behave perfectly or they make our lives particularly easy. But because they–too–are human, and they–too–are made of breath and bone and story, just like the rest of us. See I think in a world that seems to increasingly mistake happiness for blessing, and that increasingly finds ways to exclude entire swaths of people from receiving blessing, and that does its best every day to tell us that blessing will come when we become that which we are not, that we all could stand to be reminded of a simple truth: That no matter who we are or in what situation we currently find ourselves, we are loved and blessed beyond reason and beyond comprehension by God. We are blessed by the Love from which we came and to which we will one day return. Or to say it another way: We are beautiful. Period. End of sentence. I wonder sometimes if the whole message of the Beatitudes isn’t very similar to the whole point of the message written in sidewalk chalk. Maybe both beauty and blessing are not things we manufacture. Maybe they are things we recognize. Things we practice seeing—in ourselves and in each other—especially when it’s hardest to believe. Perhaps our blessedness and our beauty are inherent–a part of who we are–just waiting for us to realize it and then live like it. So, my friends, if this week you find that you–like me–need to hear again your own blessedness and your own beauty whispered into your bones. If you find that the finish line keeps moving. That the mirror feels unforgiving. Or that the world feels louder than your own sense of worth. Take in the fullness of this reminder–written in bright chalk. Offered without condition. Just for you AND for anyone who happens to pass by: You are beautiful. On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa  About six weeks ago, I downloaded an app called Lectio 365. If you haven't heard of it, it's a beautifully designed daily prayer guide–morning, midday, and evening prayers, rooted in Scripture and contemplation. It's made by a community called 24-7 Prayer, and it's genuinely good.
I downloaded the app about midway through my Lenten journey as an act of deeper intention. I was going to be disciplined. Focused. Present with God in a new way. And I was–at first. Right out of the gate, I was all up in that prayer game. Morning prayer-check. Midday prayer–check check. Evening prayer–check check check. Three times a day, like some kind of monk who also has Wi-Fi and an unlimited data plan. But then I missed one. Then another. A meeting ran long and swallowed my midday prayer whole. I fell asleep during evening prayer–I mean fully, embarrassingly asleep, phone on my chest, mid-breath prayer becoming mid-breath snore. Then some days I'd open the app with good intentions and then just...not pray. The app notifications kept coming–oftentimes just sitting there like a beacon quietly judging me. It–more accurately, I–felt like a complete failure. In his book Falling Upward, Fr. Richard Rohr speaks about failure in an interesting way. He writes, "When we fail we are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us." For Rohr, failure is a parade, an unbroken line stretching across generations. But it doesn’t feel like that to me. To me, failure feels like a complete breakdown. A crumbling. An interruption. A referendum of sorts on my worth. Maybe it feels like that to you too? I don’t think Richard Rohr is trying to sell us on the idea that failure is full of fun, fanciful moments with candy being hurled at us from parade floats. I think he’s trying to help us find its rightful place in the human experience. Namely, that not one of us is the first person who has found themselves marching in the failure parade, nor will we be the last. Every saint, every sinner, every fantastic or fantastically terrible person of faith has counted themselves among the number in that parade–having fallen asleep during their prayers, having spoken words of anger instead of kindness during a tense moment, having started a new diet plan or workout plan only to be starting over again the following Monday, having disappointed the people we love. In other words, failure doesn’t make us unique or exceptional in the worst possible way. It makes us human. And–if we let it–it can soften us. It can loosen our grip on the illusion that we have to get everything right. That we have to be perfect in order to be loved just as we are. Failure can remind us that we belong to one another–not because of our successes, but because of our shared fragility. In a very real way, failure has a way of bringing us back down to earth. Back to the truth of who we are. Back to the long line of ordinary people who are trying, stumbling, learning, and trying again. Not perfectly. But honestly. And maybe that's exactly where God meets us. Not at the top of our game. Not in our most disciplined, check-check-checked moments. But in the stumble. In the snore. In the notification we ignored for the fourth day in a row. In the words we can’t take back. In the silence we chose not to break. Because if failure makes us human, and if our humanity is precisely what God chose to enter and redeem, then maybe our failures are not as far from the sacred as we think. Maybe the crumbling, the interruption, the missed prayer, the misstep–maybe none of that disqualifies us from the very thing we were reaching for in the first place. I still have the app. The notifications have all been turned off now, and some mornings I open it. And some mornings I don't. And I am more convinced than ever before that the God who made us for this long, stumbling, beautiful parade is far less interested in our perfection than in our willingness to keep walking. The check marks were never really the point anyway. The reaching was. And as long as we're still reaching–no matter how imperfectly or how inconsistently–I think that counts for something. Maybe it counts for everything… On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa  Not long ago, on a Sunday after church, I found myself stretched across the engine block of my truck, changing out a spark plug and an ignition coil on the back side of the motor. I grew up working in the garage with my dad and my brothers, and I picked up a thing or two along the way. So, when my check engine light came on after a recent trip up north to visit family, and the code on the code reader indicated a misfire in cylinder 1, I decided that I would tackle the most likely culprits to the problem: The spark plug and ignition coil.
Garage work–as many of you know–isn’t particularly glamorous work. Laying across the engine isn’t particularly comfortable either. Even still, there was something familiar and energizing about it. There was grease on my hands. Tools scattered nearby. And a problem in front of me that needed a solution. As I lay there working the ratchet handle back and forth, a wave of deep sadness and deep gratitude came over me all at the same time, and I came to a very matter-of-fact realization: I don’t create things the way I used to. Yes, I write sermons. I write blog posts. I plan worship. I help shape community. All of that matters, and all of that is real work. But it’s different. I used to make things with my hands. Fix things. Build things. Figure things out in real time. I used to create solutions instead of just identifying problems. In truth, it’s been a really long time since I’ve done something that wasn’t “necessary,” but was still creatively generative. Somewhere along the way, I stopped doing that. Not because I lost the ability or because I stopped caring. But because life got busy. Grief came knocking on my doorstep. Ministry got demanding. Responsibilities piled up. And the first thing to go–as is so often the case for a lot of us–was creativity. The kind that didn’t serve an immediate purpose, but was purposeful all the same. That moment over the engine block is part of what clarified something for me. As I have thought about my upcoming sabbatical, a simple, one-word theme for that time away came to mind: Creation. Sabbatical, at its core, is about making space for something new to emerge, and in the United Church of Christ, sabbatical isn’t just a nice break for a tired pastor. It’s a theological practice rooted in Sabbath itself. In Scripture, the land was commanded to rest every seven years. Fields were left unplanted. Work slowed down. Not because nothing mattered—but because rest and renewal were necessary for life to continue. The same is true for people. And the same is true for congregations. A sabbatical is time set apart for renewal, imagination, and growth. Every five years (or so), the pastor has an opportunity to step back from the constant demands of ministry and rediscover curiosity, creativity, and joy. And the congregation has a chance to lead in new ways, to claim their own gifts, and to remember that the church does not depend on one person. Sabbatical is not about stepping away from ministry. It’s about strengthening it. And for me, this upcoming season will be an invitation to create again. To try things. To make things. To explore ideas that don’t have deadlines or outcomes attached to them. To spend time with some of the creatives in my life—people who make stained glass, who write poetry, who sit down with a blank page or a pile of materials and create something simply because it wants to be made. To spend time creating deeper relationships with God, myself, and with others. To spend time in creation–not simply barreling my way through it. To remember what it feels like to do something simply because it brings life. Not everything we create has to be useful. Not everything we make has to solve a problem. Sometimes creation itself is the point. So from June 1st thru August 30th, we will step into this season together—though not in the same way. I will be stepping into a time of renewal and creation. And you all will be stepping into a time of learning, stretching, leading, and discovering new ways to be the church together. That’s what sabbatical is for. Not escape or retreat. But renewal. So that when we come back together again, there is more life among us than there ever was before. And so that between us and through us there is–in some very real ways–creation again. On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa |
Pastor Melissa enjoying time on her hammock.
Rev. Melissa Sternhagen
Rev. Melissa Sternhagen was called as the pastor of St. Paul Congregational UCC in June of 2020. Prior to her call to St. Paul, Pr. Melissa worked as a hospice chaplain in the Ames, IA area, following pastorates at rural churches in Central Iowa and Southern Illinois. Pr. Melissa is a second-career pastor with a background in agribusiness and production & supply operations. She received her M.Div. from Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, MO, and holds a MA Ed. in Adult Education and Training, and a BA in Organizational Communications. Archives
May 2026
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