Rev. Megan
Berkowitz
Rev. Amy
Clark Feldman
Pastor Megan
December 20 2024
Baking Christmas Cookies
Baking Christmas cookies is one of my favorite childhood memories of this time of year. My mom, my cousin, and I got to work the week before Christmas making dozens and dozens of cookies from all different recipes. We would give the cookies away as gifts and serve them as dessert on Christmas Eve, when many family and friends piled into our house for dinner after Mass. I loved it so much that when my second grade class put together a cookbook, the recipe I added in was sugar cookie cutouts, and we continued to make and decorate that same recipe for over two decades afterwards. It’s not my favorite anymore, but it still tastes like home and like tradition.
Another cousin on the other side of my family is a pastry chef and cookbook author, and she wrote about our grandmother in her latest book about cookies, sharing how her own childhood memories of baking rugelach shaped her towards the career she has now. Whether cookies, hearty Christmas dinner recipes, French toast casserole, or fruitcake, the flavors of this season take on so much more meaning: tradition, family, and care.
Fellowship after church this Sunday is a Christmas cookie potluck, and whether you bring something homemade or store-bought, I hope you also bring a sweet story of Christmases past or loved ones whose memories you carry with you in this season, to share with one another over a cup of coffee and a cookie.
Peace,
Megan
Past Posts
- From Our Pastors
Rev. Megan Berkowitz
May 9, 2025 I had a lot of interest in the prayer structure I shared during last Sunday’s worship, so I wanted to write it out for you here. If you’re feeling like you’re not sure how to pray or what to say, sometimes a little scaffolding can help get you started. Don’t think that this is the ‘right’ way to pray though — any way to pray that leads you to open your heart to God is the right way! Learn More - From Our Pastors: May 2, 2025Rev. Megan Berkowitz
May 2, 2025 There is very little in the Gospels that tells of Jesus after his resurrection and before his ascension. This period gets 5 weeks in the liturgical calendar, but only one or two stories in each Gospel at most. As Pastor Amy shared in her sermon last Sunday, after the Resurrection, Jesus spends some time eating with his disciples, even sharing a grilled fish breakfast on the beach with them one morning. Learn More - From Our Pastors: April 25, 2025Rev. Megan Berkowitz
April 25, 2025 On Easter morning, we sang the hymn “Now the Green Blade Rises,” with its refrain: “Love is come again like wheat that rises green.” While it raises questions for me every year about how much pronunciation has changed in the last hundred years (did been/green and again/lain really rhyme?), it so beautifully captures the confluence of Easter and the coming of Spring in the Northern hemisphere. Learn More - From Our Pastors: April 18, 2025Rev. Megan Berkowitz
April 18, 2025 Throughout Lent, we have been Making Space: for compassion, humility, discernment, generosity, and prayer. As we move from yesterday evening’s Maundy Thursday Tenebrae service, sharing around the table and recognizing the coming darkness, to Sunday morning’s joyful worship, we are given one last, sacred opportunity to reflect in this year’s Lenten season. Learn More - From Our Pastors: April 11, 2025Rev. Amy Clark Feldman
April 11, 2025 This coming Sunday begins our walk through Holy Week. The story of this week is at the very core of our faith. We’ll travel with Jesus to confront the powers of this world that still cause so much suffering – injustice, hubris, abuse of power, scarcity, violence, and fear. Learn More - From Our Pastors: April 4, 2025Rev. Amy Clark Feldman
April 4, 2025 This Sunday is our final Sunday before Palm Sunday and Holy Week. There is one week left before Jesus, with boldness and intention, arrives in Jerusalem to take a stand against forces of corruption, oppression, violence, fear, and hate. Learn More - From Our Pastors: March 28, 2025Rev. Megan Berkowitz
March 28, 2025 We’re drawing to the close of our Stewardship season for this year, and we’ll mark Stewardship Sunday in worship this week with a testimony and a focus in scripture and sermon on generosity. Learn More - From Our Pastors: March 21 2025Rev. Megan Berkowitz
March 21, 2025 I gave up social media for Lent this year. I’ve tried it in past years, and it never quite stuck. I always found reasons to log back in: an urgent question for a group of colleagues, a video of Rosey that was too good not to share, or even just an accidental slip. It’s sticking this year, though. Learn More
