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A Family Like Mine: Biblical Stories of Love, Loss, and Longing
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Author Archives: Rosalind C Hughes
Sirens
Time was when the siren was a singer of sea mist; her music has hardened, staccato,and her figure, smooth and long like steel; still, she kills, and from a distance the echo returns as a wail falling and rising like smoke foreshadowing the ashes of the dead
Posted in gun violence, poetry
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Easter 2023: it’s (still) a love story
It isn’t like any love story we could conjure up, because it is true, a true story: Jesus lived among us, the Son of God was crucified, descended to the dead, and on the third day rose again, and he could not wait to greet his beloved disciples on the road, could not wait to see their shining, astonished faces; he could not wait to love them back. Continue reading
Posted in holy days, homily, lectionary reflection, sermon, story
Tagged Easter, Jesus, love story, Resurrection
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A special place
To celebrate the day of its harrowing, and because the phrase came up again just the other day … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, poetry, prayer
Tagged Holy Saturday, repentance, special place in hell
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Good Friday
The cross is a mirror. It shows us what we are not, as well as what we are; the embodiment of God, the epitome of humanity: images mundane and immortal in one body.The cross is a mirror. The cross is a mirror. The hammer falls and innocent flesh … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, homily, poetry, prayer
Tagged Good Friday, gun violence, Holy Week, Lent, mercy, the Cross
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Maundy Thursday message
This, for me, was the tragedy of Judas: that he couldn’t see how much God loved him, even when God was right in front of him, washing his feet. Continue reading
Triduum
While the dough was doing its thing, I went out to the forge, made one more cross out of gun barrels. Continue reading
Posted in gun violence, holy days
Tagged #GunstoGardens, #GunstoGrace, bread, Good Friday, Jesus, Maundy Thursday, school schooting, way of the cross
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Thursday
We pray in awkward whispers against the reredos of white towels fumbling over nervous feet held in stumbling hands, certain of nothing but betrayal, the cross to come, and sunset’s pale inversion in the water
Posted in holy days, poetry, prayer, story
Tagged betrayal, Easter, foot washing, Maundy Thursday
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Silence
And my teenaged ghost shook her head at how I had forgotten which rule most matters. Continue reading
Hosanna – save us!
We are used to thinking of them as the same crowd, moving from one Sunday to the next, but what if they were more like us: divided among themselves, one crying one thing and one another, each with their own ideas of whom should be saved, and how? Continue reading
Posted in holy days
Tagged cross, gun violence, Holy Week, Jesus, Palm Sunday, Passion Gospel, school shootings
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Preaching from the shadows
The sound of mallet on metal
wood and splintered flesh
ricochets around the city walls
shivering the fabric of
the crowd that clothes the alleyways
too often lost in thought and prayers
we fall without an echo
into the open grave Continue reading
over the water 