Author Archives: Rosalind C Hughes

Prophets and privateers: by their fruits shall ye know them

Posted on July 21, 2019

There is a hardness to the grapes, and a waxiness to the skin of the pear. There is sawdust at the bottom of the bowl, instead of the dusting of peach fuzz that we expected to find. We have been fooled. The fruit is a fake. It is plastic and wood, made only to decorate the room. It is not even a still life. There is no nurture or nutrition in it. It is lifeless. It is a scam. Continue reading →

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Morning meditation

Posted on July 9, 2019

I squeezed in a swim before work; the lake was grumpy, turning its shoulder to the shore. Now, traffic shimmers the road like fish, still, something within me flexes her wings, soaring among the shrill gulls, over the water.

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Do good. Don’t stop.

Posted on July 7, 2019

The seventy returned to Jesus excited and amped up, saying, “You should see how we owned the forces of evil! How we slayed in the name of the Spirit! We are on fire!”
And Jesus said, “Yesss. Awesome. You are amazing. You are undefeatable. I know, I know that the way of love wins (because, ahem, I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life). I know that you have it in you to do great things. But, not to rain on your parade or anything, but … Do not become distracted, even by your own indisputable awesomeness, from the way of love.” Continue reading →

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The cathedral

Posted on July 2, 2019

Entering a slanted cathedral, pilgrim feet sheathed in tourist shoes, watching for the Spirit’s tell between the illustrated tombs; some unquiet air consecrated to the sighs of an unquiet world. If our hearts remain stone, and cold, at least, let … Continue reading →

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Stronghold

Posted on June 29, 2019

On a mountain of modest height, rendered in verse for its appetite for irony and steadfastness, they found the man, the poets say, guarding his skeleton where it lay. The way to the summit is strewn with the rubble of … Continue reading →

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Birdsong

Posted on June 25, 2019

Birdsong drizzles through evergreens, soaking earth with sweetness and alarm.

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Trinity Sunday, 2019

Posted on June 16, 2019

Within God’s perfect being is the reconciliation of relationship, the interplay of love, the communication of difference and solidarity. Those aspects of God promise that we are understood, that we are accepted in all of our difference, diversity, struggle, and longing; that within the heart of a God who knows all about it from experience, we are healed. Within the heart of a God who knows even brokenness, betrayal, the shadow sides of love, we are recognized, accepted, restored. Continue reading →

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