Saint Luke's Episcopal Church - Weiser, Idaho, 106 E Liberty Street, Weiser, ID (2026)

09/03/2026

Carolyn Wesner
Words and Names

Names are important, meaningful, and often very descriptive. Some names, especially one-word names are instantly recognizable, such as: Dolly, Elvis, Michaelangelo, Jesus. At times, a name becomes a description lasting through the ages, like Hi**er or Judas.
That’s why the old saying “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is so untrue. Labelling, name-calling, and mean words which are heard or spoken repeatedly DO hurt and sometimes distort our understanding of ourselves or others or even ideas. Words create pictures that stay in the mind’s eye, correctly or not. The thing about humans: we LIKE words and pictures (even if possibly inaccurate or untruthful).
John Vaillant, in his book “Fire Weather” notes that “Naming and repetition are how myths and legends become anchored in the collective mind, the name serving as a kind of mnemonic avatar for the larger, more complicated whole. We may not read the Bible or the Koran, but we’ve all heard of Satan, and we all have an image that comes to mind.” Really, we all have different images, depending on the things we understood from childhood, and that also goes for name-pictures for God.
God the Father words may depict an old man with a white beard sitting on a cloud, angry and vengeful. Images of Jesus? A person on a cross, dripping blood, or with a whip smashing down on money tables in the temple, a ghostly figure walking on water, or as a cute, clean baby in a Christmas manger. The Holy Spirit? A flying dove, a whirlwind raining fire and brimstone, or a still, small voice, singing in the air.
John Denver wrote that “music makes pictures and often tells stories;” words set to music is one of the most lasting ways to imprint an idea or a thought in our minds. That’s why the Bible includes Psalms (songs); singing them brings praiseful words into the heart. Let their goodly words and music lift you up.
Everyone is welcome at St. Luke’s, services at 10:00, Coffee Hour at 11:00.

09/03/2026

Spiritual Practices
Carolyn Wesner

There are three basic “spiritual practices” which are fairly common among world religions: Charity, Fasting, and Prayer. Why are these things called spiritual practices anyway? Because they encourage what is best in the life of each person’s spirit (or inner life, or the best of our thought processes).
Charity used to be called almsgiving, a very old word. Almsgiving means giving money, food, or other aid to those in need – today we might call it participating in charitable activities. Doing this helps us get “out of ourselves”, thinking of others, remembering that not everyone has the food, the possessions, the shelter that many of us enjoy but sometimes take for granted. In the scriptures, “charity” is sometimes translated as love for one another!
The second spiritual practice is fasting, which often means cutting back on food (we all tend to eat too much!) but could also mean cutting back on any of the things in which we over-indulge. Fasting from things like over-shopping, over-drinking, over-doom scrolling, over-complaining, over-consuming news programs, binging, you get the picture. What are the fasting benefits? More opportunities for charity (see above), more time for the family, more time to be in nature, and more time for God.
The last of the three basic spiritual practices is prayer. Prayer takes many forms! The writer Anne Lamott’s most favorite daily prayer is “help”, closely followed by “help now!” See? Prayer doesn’t have to be long, wordy, perfectly phrased, with the whole situation ‘splained to the higher power.
Most of the time we either move too quickly, as in Let’s get on with it! Or too slowly, as in Let’s not be too hasty about this. Spiritual practices work together to give balance to our lives and our activities, neither too fast or too slow, not over-indulging nor under-serving. Paul the Apostle called this balance “living in Christ”: practicing love and charity in God’s time and space. It means fasting to bring the life back into balance. It means praying to stay in touch with the Someones who cares and understands us, always.

09/02/2026

From the museum in Weiser, Idaho.

Rev. Taylor c 1900

08/15/2026

Carolyn Wesner
Dogged Determination

Most of us have some kind of background in determination. You know, “when the going gets tough, the tough get going” or maybe “never ever give up.” We are programmed from an early age to get going to get ahead! It’s a tough world so we have to give as good/bad as we get to survive and thrive.
The problems arise when we apply the same rugged determination to our relationship with God. Richard Rohr, in his book The Tears of Things, wrote “Just as life, by its very nature, never stays the same, we cannot stay the same, either. It’s not marching doggedly in one direction – as many believers have been unfairly taught.” A narrow-vision focus tends to make us stubbornly willful, but not gracefully willing to be moved along life’s highway within God’s plan, however it may unfold.
Life will always include setbacks: sickness, job loss, relationship break-ups, kids going wrong, financial mistakes, or lightning-caused grass fires. You name it, we are in the thick of it. Certain people will grow through these events while others get stuck: angry, resentful, and completely shut down. But really, who can blame them?
The prophet Jeremiah felt these conflicts. It’s a paradox! He, like us, had a hard time trusting the conflicts and paradoxes of life in his time (which included national collapse). Things were happening which he had no control over whatsoever – he had to give up the illusion of control, and learn to give it to a larger, more loving, more informed being: the God of the universe. Jesus, on the cross of crucifixion, gave up all control when he prayed “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” Love and forgiveness are greater powers than hate and retribution. The forgiveness of grace does upset our traditional worldly viewpoints: we like justice, and maybe with a little vengeance sprinkled in - okay we’re only human. Fortunately, God is bigger and better than that and will always keep working with us.
Everyone is welcome at St. Luke’s: service at 10:00, coffee hour at 11:00.

08/15/2026

Carolyn Wesner
Jeremiah the Messenger

In the Episcopal Church tradition, there are four Bible readings each week: One from the Old Testament, one from the Psalms, one from the general New Testament, and one from the four Gospels. In this way, most of the bible is read aloud over three years. Slow but steady!
The Old Testament readings lately are from the diaries of the prophet Jeremiah, a preacher’s kid with some very religious relatives of the family of Benjamin. He lived about 80 years (650b.c. to 570b.c.), a long life, considering the wild and scary times of his era. He lived through the reigns of 5 kings, the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of Solomon’s Temple by the soldiers of the Persian Empire (including being taken captive himself). Jeremiah didn’t want to be the bad-news-bearer predicting all the bad stuff, but when God calls…
The thing is, he loved his country. He was very patriotic and of course wanted peace, safety and prosperity for everyone! He really didn’t want to speak the truth about what was coming and God’s plan for the great DIVORCE (Jeremiah 3:8). The people had broken the old commandment to only worship the God who had brought them out of Egyptian slavery – but they kept running after other nations’ gods (spiritual adultery, Jer.1-3). God was fed up: don’t offer me those phony offerings, and “Jeremiah, don’t even pray for these people anymore – I’m not listening.”
Jeremiah was so upset and distraught that he cried. He begged the leadership to stop and think, disaster was coming! Did the king listen? Nope; he tore up the messages and had Jeremiah dumped into a dry well to starve and die (a kind foreigner rescued him, thank you). So, the kingdom collapsed and most were taken as prisoners to Babylon, where Jeremiah continued to try and encourage the people for good, to think and plan for a changed future. Even in hopeless circumstances Jeremiah prayed for repentance and God’s graceful forgiveness, a lesson to us all.
Everyone is welcome at St. Luke’s: service at 10:00, coffee hour at 11:00.

08/15/2026

Carolyn Wesner
Why Church?

Maybe you’re not a “churched” person at all (thank you for reading this article anyway) and as you drive around town you see these buildings called “First Church of the -------“, or St. Somebody’s Church, and wonder: what do they do in there?
Meeting together as a group for common, agreed-upon purposes has been done for thousands of years. This could apply to clubs, political parties, family genealogical reunions, or Thanksgiving dinners. Chances are, you’ve been to one or many of these! Ever since time began, though, humans have acknowledged a higher power in some way, coming together in special places to sing and pray and praise the god of their cultural times.
Those of the Christian faith, the Jewish faith, and the Muslim faith (the three great religions coming down from ancient Abraham) each do this “meeting” practice too. There are a wide variety of experiences between them, and many branching offshoots from them, and that’s okay. Just as any extended family unit has understandable differences, we make room for a variety of cultural faith practices.
A couple of reasons why gathering together to celebrate Jesus, the founder of CHRISTianity, are important: the book of Hebrews in the New Testament mentions these in chapter 10. The first one is gathering together to help each other to active love and goodness. These aren’t just words; we all need new ideas and ways to break out of our settled thoughts and traditions! How to actively love and serve the community and each other? Church is where we can brainstorm. How to be a person practicing active goodness? Think Good Samaritan here.
The second reason in Hebrews 10 to do church is to encourage one another. Face it, we all have our ups and downs. It’s no use pretending to be all perfect – everything’s fine, nothing wrong in my life. Not. Church fellowship becomes a safe space to quietly share each other’s troubles, find solutions, and get strength for the week ahead. Two good reasons for church.
Everyone is welcome at St. Luke’s: service at 10:00, coffee hour at 11:00.

08/15/2026

Carolyn Wesner
Living Between the Lines

Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and don’t step over the line, right? As much as we’d like to have life so very narrowly defined, so much depends on context and understanding, sort of like driving a car.
In the early days of transportation, walking, riding a horse or driving a cart didn’t require lanes with a line down the middle of the pathway. There were some customary rules of the road such as who should pull over on a hill or give a faster person/animal the right of way. Later, as methods of transport improved and roads got better, travelers couldn’t depend on everybody knowing or agreeing on the rules of the road, so traffic laws were invented to back them up. New industries popped up for roads, lines, signs, policing and traffic courts to keep us safe on the roads, like it or not.
While single or double lines down the center work, for nighttime or foggy or rainy days an added white line at the pavement’s edge is helpful to keep drivers in-lane. The good thing about all those lines is that we have a little leeway as we continue down the road. Some people hug the center line, while others drift a bit to the edges and seem to like it there; others, maybe drivers in training, are encouraged to “steer for the center of your lane.” All these scenarios are perfectly okay, perfectly legal.
Living within the lines of life works much the same way. To live in a civilized society, we have certain norms which our parents, schools, history classes, church or life experiences have taught us. Are we all exactly the same? No, as individuals, and especially towards fellow Christians we need to show flexibility between the lines. God was gracious all through the Old and New Testaments, showing forgiveness with our human mistakes and failures when we veered off the road entirely, coaxing us back between the lines. Because God is good, and on everyone’s side.
Everyone is welcome at St. Luke’s: service at 10:00, coffee hour at 11:00.

08/15/2026

Carolyn Wesner
Talk to the Animals

Some stories in the biblical writings involve nature doing unusual things. Seems like the farther back we go, tales exist about animals, plants and weather acting in ways which are out of character to what is normally experienced today.
The first “book” of the Bible is Genesis: “origins”. The unknown author wrote, in chapter three, that there was a serpent who was craftier than any wild creature that the Lord God had made. This serpent spoke two sentences to Lady A-dam, the “human” but she didn’t seem surprised. We might have said “Hey WHAT?? Listen to this, a talking snake!” Because this particular snake was being deceptive, it received a curse. Vipers and dragons then get a bad reputation for deceit in the ancient writings, but not all the time: a snake was used to represent Christ (John 3:14-15), so they can’t be lumped together as bad guys. Context counts.
Then there is a talking donkey, recorded in Numbers 22-24. Donkeys have been domesticated and used for thousands of years, for better or for worse, depending on their owners. This donkey’s owner, Balaam, was hired to go and put curses on an Israelite encampment (God said not to go). Balaam took the bribe payment and saddled up his little donkey to travel. At one point on the way, the donkey balked, turning off the path. Balaam beat her to get going, but it kept happening. Suddenly the donkey turned and said “Stop, what have I ever done to you to make you beat me three times?” Again, the human didn’t seem surprised, until his eyes were opened and he saw an invisible being blocking the way with a sword, waiting to execute him for bribery and corruption. Ouch!
Whatever our beliefs may be about these stories and others in early records, we can see some consistent principles: spiritual lessons about obedience, temptation, and intervention from a divine being. If we look, we can recognize the same patterns in subtle ways in our lives today.
Everyone is welcome at St. Luke’s for service at 10:00, coffee hour at 11:00.

08/15/2026

Carolyn Wesner
Wisdom, Not Answers

Everybody wants answers. It’s hard enough to get definitive instructions on simple things, even with YouTube and Alexa and artificial intelligence. Other areas of expertise are pretty cut and dried, math for example: 2 + 2 still equals four, even in other languages and cultures. This is good news for engineers building sky-scrapers, or those people on the 97th floor would be in trouble.
Ancient writings capture stories, songs and advice from way back when, and here we are today with the ability to read up on all their family secrets, trials, tribulations, good days and bad days. The thing is, we are reading through our own cultural lenses, and in modern languages many translations away from theirs.
That said, even long-ago people had trouble understanding or making sense of a god-being. There seem to be conflicting messages! We love Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd”…, but maybe not Genesis 6, “I am going to destroy all flesh”. Many like the story of Esther, an orphan Jewish POW girl in Iraq, who tried out for Queen in the king’s beauty contest, and won, joining the harem. Wait, did that make her a pr******te – what was she thinking?? Then there are the Old Testament instructions about how to treat your slaves (your slaves?), how property must revert to the original owner every 50 years (bye bye), and that farmers must take off every seventh year so they (and the land) can rest – a whole different civilization and thinking process than we have today.
We can still gather wise principles though. Instead of slaves, think employees/employers. Be fair, pay on time, give a good day’s work. Smart farmers will know to care for the land and not wear it out. Today, property owners get title searches and deeds, allowing them to be secure in their homes. The point is: look for the big picture, the over-arching principle which fits the situation. The big thing that’s always current? The might, mercy, and love of God.
Everyone is welcome at St. Luke’s for service at 10:00, coffee hour at 11:00.

07/07/2026

St Lukes Church, Easter 1894 - somethings change and others remain the same.

Saint Luke's Episcopal Church - Weiser, Idaho

09/03/2026

09/03/2026

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08/15/2026

08/15/2026

08/15/2026

08/15/2026

08/15/2026

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07/07/2026

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