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A Family Like Mine: Biblical Stories of Love, Loss, and Longing
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Author Archives: Rosalind C Hughes
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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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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over the water 