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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
Who is my neighbour?
Unseen in the shadow of the story, a young cub of the mountain watching the value of love lavished like oil, profligate pity; following at a distance to see if kindness was really worth the weight of stolen gold
Our Mother of the cocktail bar
Under the stairwell of the cocktail bar the hooded figure lays out objects of everyday ritual: teaspoon, lighter, tourniquet. Behind the bar an ersatz courtyard paved with astroturf, foxgloves painted on the wall, purple digitalis for the broken heart. From … Continue reading
Not as the world
When he says, “My peace I give to you,” Jesus is not describing a passive peace. It is the peace not of the grave, where Jesus himself was restless, but of living waters, rolling down like justice, roaring like a vision, aflame with mercy. It is the profound and urgent love that fanned the waters of creation and produced life. Continue reading
Posted in holy days, sermon
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Love one another?
A sermon for the fifth Sunday of Easter in 2025. Love is not a light undertaking. Love will break your heart. Love will ask you to move mountains. Love will require that you sacrifice your most closely held prejudices, melt … Continue reading
Posted in homily, sermon
Tagged Acts 11, Easter 5 Year C, Jesus, love, love one another, new commandment, Peter, Revelation
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Mother’s Day
Including words from the original Mother’s Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe The very Earth is heaving beneath the weight of war. Fire consumes and leaves no food for the rest of God’s creatures; lead pollutes the soil, the seas, the … Continue reading
Posted in current events, poetry, prayer
Tagged Julia Ward Howe, Mother's Day, peace, war
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Lessons from my cat
I have decided to join my cat in growling at the storm. We both know when it is coming. I don’t know if she feels the same pain behind the temple, or whether her whiskers quiver barometrically; we look at … Continue reading
Unbegrudging Jesus
Then Jesus showed up. Just as the light was dawning, just as the sun was rising behind them, the shore becoming shadowy and obscured by the smoke of his charcoal fire, so that they could barely make him out, but there he was. … still providing for them, still tending to them and feeding them, his lambs. Continue reading
Posted in homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Ananias, conversion, Easter 3, Jesus, Paul, reconciliation, repentance, Saul, Simon Peter
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Catherine and the world on fire
Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire. – Catherine of SienaBut what if the world were already on fire? Set the world on fire,blaze like oil across the waters such that none … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, poetry, prayer
Tagged Catherine of Siena, creation, ocean, world on fire
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Forgiving and retaining
Forgiveness tells the truth; Jesus still carries the marks of the nails in his hands and his feet, and the soldiers and the scoffers cannot enter the space of peace while they are still carrying their hammers. Continue reading
Posted in homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged doubt, Easter 2, forgiveness, Jesus, John 20:19-31, reconciliation, Thomas
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Easter (without a happy ending)
Easter is not a happy ending. It is hopeful, it is healing, it is a powerful rebuke of death and a defiant proclamation of the life, the mercy, and the love of God that persists throughout human history, throughout human … Continue reading
over the water 