Presbyterians traditionally didn’t use liturgical colors in worship. We had a bare pulpit and Communion table.

If the Session wanted, worship on Sundays could be an hour of total silence like Quakers, or an hour of just a sermon and nothing else. A king of England was beheaded partly for trying to force a common order of worship on Presbyterians.

In the recently released trailers for the film "Testament of Ann Lee," viewers are treated to striking visuals of Shakers engaged in intricate, synchronized movement.

When you walk past Edgewater Presbyterian Church or hear a greeting from the Chicago Presbytery, you usually hear some version of the phrase "welcoming church" or “accepting church.” Our sister denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) uses “reconciling church.”

I was met with a scent that felt unexpected in a Reformed space. Tucked away on a side table near the baptismal font was a simple ceramic bowl filled with sand, holding a few smoldering incense sticks.

In the rich tapestry of Christian faith, there are often different but equally passionate voices defining what a healthy spiritual life should look like.

Presbyterians, Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Methodists moved away from using YHWH in prayers and hymns.

Sometimes we have to embrace that mystical nature to see how poignant, how poetic, how so utterly beyond our understanding what happens to us is when we go to worship.