Each time I watch the film Steel Magnolias, I fast-forward from the time Shelby falls down in the kitchen to when they are arriving at the cemetery for her funeral. (If the person next to you doesn’t seem to understand this reference, have mercy on them and invite them to...
A very long time ago when I took my first Lamaze class, the doula asked each of us to picture an image, something comforting that we could conjure in our minds when labor became “uncomfortable”. Theoretically, conjuring that image would comfort me, allowing birth to happen naturally, as if I...
The Summer after my first year of undergrad, I returned to my parents’ house and got a job working at the paper mill with my father. I rotated through the same shiftwork schedule my father had worked for three decades at that point. It was not always pleasant, but I...
This is another one of those Sundays when it is not easy to be a preacher, pastor, or priest. I keep reminding myself—and I would remind you—that we do not choose our texts on Sundays in The Episcopal Church. As I consider that these texts were assigned, in rotation, for...
I got to spend last week with some colleagues in Dayton – sadly in the news this morning for a deadly mass shooting last night blocks from where we were working on one relatively small book in the Bible, Hosea. We told it to each other. We picked it apart...
“Tigers” a poem by Eliza Griswold What are we now but voiceswho promise each other a lifeneither one can delivernot for lack of wantingbut wanting won’t make it soWe cling to a vineat the cliff’s edge.There are tigers aboveand below. Let us loveone another and let go.” Once, there were...
One goes on pilgrimage expecting life changing moments. Through a controlled series of “adverse” circumstances, each person is challenged to adjust to radical time changes that affect sleep patterns, not always knowing whether the sun is up or down, eating at different times of the day and from different cuisines,...
So, this is the last Sunday in Stuart’s 2019 Sabbatical and he will be back in the office this week and celebrating and preaching next week. As we on staff and on vestry prepared for this critical time away, we fully expected Stuart to have a rich time, and to...
Hearing voices that other people can’t hear is considered to be a sign of serious mental illness. Ironically, even amongst us Episcopalians it is not unheard of for someone to make reference to “hearing God” talk to them. And once a year we use this text from Acts to mark...
During one summer in seminary, I worked in a theological college in a country in east Africa. It was the worst summer ever. And I think about it every day. Whatever capacity I have to sit with you in times of pain or mystery is largely because of that summer...