I am blessed to have been nurtured and known by my mother. I am confident that after three boys and then another girl, mum anticipated dresses and dolls, kitchen lessons and cookies. Nope. In me, it was sweatshirts, blue jeans and baseball gloves, Little League and creek walks. She loved me fully as I am, and no one has ever listened to me as deeply as my mother.

One Christmas, my father determined to take the Snyder Family Christmas Photo. Everyone put on, as we used to call it “our Sunday best.” My sister wore her favorite dress, the brothers wore suit jackets and ties and my mother selected for five-year-old me a dress (!) and white stockings and black dress shoes. I was having none of it. I pitched a fit, yelled, cried, whined. The blissful family photo was far from happening. Loving me for who I am, mum had me put on blue jeans under the dress and go barefoot. The photo in this post is that moment. It’s my favorite photo of me with my mother.

I know for many that my experience is far from theirs. That is why we find ourselves in friends and communities that know us, love us, nurture us. The Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community is that kind of knowing and loving and nurturing community. Sure, many places say it, yet, at Hot Metal you feel it and experience that spirit when you are here with us. It is an energy that is present and flows in and through the space because it is centered in the persons who are the Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community.

In these days and times in which we live and move and have our being, we need a place to be and to become who we are, a place to be welcomed, known and supported. That place is Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community, now in Hazelwood, 134 E Elizabeth Street: Service at 10:30 am.