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© Rosalind C Hughes and over the water, 2011-2021. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Rosalind C Hughes and over the water, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
A Family Like Mine: Biblical Stories of Love, Loss, and Longing
https://bookstore.upperroom.org/Products/1921/a-family-like-mine.aspxWhom Shall I Fear: Urgent Questions for Christians in an Age of Violence
https://www.amazon.com/Whom-Shall-Fear-Questions-Christians/dp/0835819671-
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Author Archives: Rosalind C Hughes
We are family: a sermon for #WearOrange weekend
Whatever we do to change our landscape of guns and gun violence – whatever policies we support or initiatives are inspired – it begins with our conversion, our repentance, our turning from the tempter’s whispers to the Word of God. Continue reading
Posted in Gun control, sermon, Whom Shall I Fear?
Tagged #WearOrange, Children Under Fire, John Woodrow Cox, Mark 3:20-35
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Trinity Sunday: we who are many are one
It is the mutuality of the Trinity that we seek. We hear its echoes in our prayers: “though we are many, we are one body” (Romans 12:5). We come closest to it when we experience compassion. Continue reading
Posted in current events, Holy Days, sermon
Tagged Amos 5:8, COVID, crossroads, gun violence, John 12:32, John 3:17, John Donne, racism, Romans 12:5, Trinity Sunday
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Prophesy!
The intentions of God, that these dry bones might live, are not beyond our vision. We can see how the world might be, flesh and sinew knit together, if we lived on the breath of God, seeing God’s Spirit in the inhalation, the exhalation of every human being made in God’s image. Continue reading
The dry bones
They must have been famished,that bunch of bones shrugged together,flesh and sinew awaiting breath.How long had they been fasting in the dust? They were surely parched;their skin must have sagged,their steps dragged – how manycalories does resurrection burn, anyway? Did … Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, sermon preparation
Tagged creation, Ezekiel 37:1-14, Pentecost, Resurrection, Valley of Dry Bones
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A prayer for the earthbound
As deeply as he descended among the dead, plumbing Hell and Hades,the limits of human horror too easily imaginedby the earthbound; so far he invites us to soar beyond our petty promises of punishment and death, to life beyond the … Continue reading
Friends of Jesus
Jesus’ radical reordering of the relationship between himself and his disciples is part of his final teaching, the pinnacle of his incarnation as a human being, a friend among friends. Continue reading
Posted in homily, sermon
Tagged Aelred of Rievaulx, John 15:9-17, spiritual friendship
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“Let anyone accept this who can.”
How we talk about one another matters. Loving our neighbours matters. Bringing life, extending resurrection, matters. Recognizing the image of God, infinite in its diversity and indivisible in each person into whom God has breathed life, including you, including me: this is part of loving the God who has so loved us. In those whose bodies, lives, families, or identities most differ from our own, there it is that we see most clearly the breadth and expansiveness of God’s embrace. Continue reading
Prayer for an end to mass shootings
My God,can we not go one week,sabbath to sabbath,without a mass shooting? Will you not beatour pistols into ploughshares,our shotguns into shovels,our rifles into rakes,massage some feeling intoour hearts of stone? I sigh, open my eyes;the mirror stares back in … Continue reading
Posted in current events, Gun control, gun safety, poetry, prayer
Tagged mass shooting
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Let justice roll like a river; still waters can wait
There is no way of praying Psalm 23 truthfully, honestly, lovingly, in this time and place that does not acknowledge that there are no still waters, there can be no resting in meadows, when violence threatens to break in at any moment. There is no peace while injustice holds sway anywhere among us. Continue reading
Sore wounded
First purple, then green new leaves unfurl as though winter had never been; veined and vain, they bear no marks of last year’s deer, no signs of decay. This is not the resurrection of the dead; this is a conjuring … Continue reading
Posted in poetry, prayer
Tagged crown of thorns, Easter, Jesus, Resurrection, spring
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