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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
Gentiles, tax collectors, and the beloved community
Owe no one anything, except to love one another, writes Paul to his congregation of Romans. And, it is written elsewhere, Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and … Continue reading
Posted in homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged baptism, beloved community, Jesus, Matthew 18:15-20, Year A Proper 18
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Compassion and complicity
Pray for the people of Nepal and Tibet, the dead, the dying, the missing and the missed, the grieving, the helping, the despairing. Pray, too, that we might learn to promise never again to flood the whole earth, and, with our knowledge of good and evil, to find a way to keep it. Continue reading
Father, forgive
An inadequate poem after visiting St Michael’s Mount and encountering Lyn Constable Maxwell’s bronze of the Archangel in the island church. Continue reading
Posted in holy days, poetry
Tagged art, Coventry Cathedral, forgiveness, Jacob Epstein, Lyn Maxwell, sculpture, St Michael, St Michael’s Mount, war and peace
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Liberty is praying Psalm 93
Alone against the storm-wrecked sky she stands; her untired arm lifts up her light to greet the lightning flashing from on high, though to admonish or illuminate is in the beholder’s eye; her face is streaming, rivets making rivulets to multiply and fall, but for whom … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged Emma Lazarus, immigration, justice, Mother of Exiles, New Colossus, Psalm 93, Statue of Liberty
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The dance
We find these things to be true, and self-evident, that as good as we pretend or try or believe ourselves to be, we have by design created margins and marginalized other creatures created of God’s affection. That however hard we try to resist, or pretend to resist, the music of the swirl has us tapping our feet. That we have been the ones demanding that God jig to our tune. That we have been exhausting and exhausted. And that the only hope for rest lies elsewhere, with Other-Whom. Continue reading
Decentering
My grandmother was born in the Victorian age, half a United States of America ago and an ocean of war and plunder away; in the span of creation less than the blink of an eyelash. Such is living memory, expanding … Continue reading
A little life
Heron was back at the Lake tonight, along with ten thousand mayflies strewn across the surface like petals, wings still spread as though for flight, and I, no doubt with several pressed to my bosom like a medieval lover with … Continue reading
Posted in poetry, prayer
Tagged Creator, God, heron, J.B.S. Haldane, Lake Erie, Matthew 10:29, mayflies, sparrows
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God of the sparrows
There are approximately 1.6 billion sparrows on the earth, living on every continent, except Antarctica, which always gets a pass. The sparrow, small but ubiquitous, persistent, sometimes pestilent bird, nesting in the girders of a Walmart warehouse or the eaves of your house, most populous of birds, no bird of paradise, its life is held cheaply; yet God, the God of the sparrows, values it so highly that not one will fall from the sky except that it is caught in God’s hand. Continue reading
Posted in homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Abraham, Father's Day, Genesis 21:8-21, God of sparrows, God the Father, Jesus, Matthew 10:24-39, Year A Proper 7
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Memento mori at the beach
Smoothed out by the shore, the rough and tumble of sea and sand, the bone of a water bird, its bill intact, eye empty and inviting. All trace of the violence of life and death has been polished away by the grinding mortality of time and this … Continue reading
Trinity Sunday: playing favourites
Is it wrong to have a favourite person of the Trinity?
One of the things I love about Trinity Sunday, which is always the first Sunday after Pentecost, is how we find ourselves thrown into confusion by the image of a God who is One, who is Three, who is Spirit, who is Incarnate, who has known breath and who breathed breath into being. We are tempted to try to make sense of it all, with pictures and patterns of three-leafed clovers and Celtic knots. But God is not a mathematical problem, and God – while we can see God everywhere – God will always be more than our vision can contain, or our words describe, or our hearts need.
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Posted in holy days, homily, sermon
Tagged Genesis 1, Great Commission, Trinity Sunday
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over the water 