Weekly Greeting - August 29, 2025
Well, Jay and I are officially “empty nesters.”
We had a wonderful trip to New York where we met up with Josh and did a bit of shopping and sightseeing before we moved Clare in to her new home on Sunday afternoon. Knowing what to expect only made it slightly easier than the last time we dropped off a child at school, but familiarity with the process also allowed me the opportunity to enjoy it more this time around.
I paid closer attention to the remarks made by the Dean of the College this time than I did last time, and found that his words struck me at a deeper level. He spoke of the importance of community, and reminded us that we are all better able to understand ourselves and each other when we listen well to others and when we share our own viewpoints with courage. This, he reminded us, is the point of education — not to memorize facts but to learn how to ask the right questions and to think critically about how we live.
He was not far from the questions that John Wesley asked of his preachers at the first Methodist conference in 1744: “What shall we teach?” “How shall we teach?” and “What shall we do?” John Wesley knew, and United Methodists still know today, that learning for the sake of learning is a futile exercise. For learning to have any meaning at all that learning must inform how we live, the choices we make, and the postures we assume in the world. Unless we make the connection from head to heart and heart to hands our learning is in vain.
My prayer for my own children and for all of our children is that everything we teach them and everything they learn at Bethlehem UMC informs the people that they are becoming. My prayer is that it shapes them into becoming faithful disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. I hope that you will join me in that prayer.
In the love of Christ,
Mary Beth