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A Family Like Mine: Biblical Stories of Love, Loss, and Longing
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Author Archives: Rosalind C Hughes
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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Incongruity (or, Fireworks at Pentecost)
No gentle breeze to nurse the flames but a gust, a buffet that knocks out other sources of power, so that all we see is one another’s wonder by light of a fire that reveals, does not obliterate the features … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, poetry, preparing for Sunday with poetry
Tagged #preparingforSundaywithpoetry, Pentecost
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Beyond the borders
Beyond the borders of my body lie a floor in need of sweeping, a piano that needs playing, a spider that I saw while making tea, birds that want feeding, though the last creature seen there was a long-fingered raccoon, scooping handfuls of seed into its joyful … Continue reading
Posted in current events, poetry, prayer
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Was it necessary?
We do not have Pharaoh’s excuse, whose heart by God was hardened, but from that evening in the garden we have pursued our own destruction. We cannot claim we didn’t know, with the fruit still sweet on our tongue. Was it necessary? Better ask the serpent, … Continue reading
The olive grove bears witness
They say that the pelican plucks out her feathers to feed her young with blood; I have never seen it, but I hear from the pilgrims who come to see where he fed our roots with prayers pulled out by the shaft. They … Continue reading
Posted in story
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No longer Monday
It’s not Monday any more, but the scent still lingers in the house when they awaken, and Lazarus is grateful for the distraction; he hardly knows himself these days, still amazed at the complicated gift of life. The echoes of … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection
Tagged Holy Week, Isaiah 42, Jesus, John 12:1-11, Lazarus
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If these were quiet …
Think of the palms, crushed and bruised by the colt and the crowds, and of the ones who came back, the poor, the quiet, who came back to collect their broken stems and bleeding leaves, and wove them into something new, something to sell back to … Continue reading
God’s time
His last breath took him by surprise. Until its vapour dissipated in the ragged inhalations of his sisters, beginnings to convert his death into ululation; until then, he had thought that he would come. Hard to say what happened next: … Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer, preparing for Sunday with poetry, sermon preparation
Tagged death, hope, Jesus, John 11:1-44, Lazarus
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A world of miracles
Do you also want to be his disciples? asked the man. Then try this: Listen. Listen to the stories of the one you have walked by a thousand times in as many days dripping with pity without breaking your stride. … Continue reading
over the water 