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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
Joseph, the dreamers
With the eyes of his heart enlightened, Joseph knew how to pay attention to the whispers of God, how to be guided by love, how to risk giving everything up, giving everything to the project of God’s incarnation as the Christ. Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Joseph, Matthew 2, open hearts, refugees
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A prayer on the threshold of the year
Dear God, are we ready for a new year? Already it is at hand, already it has arrived on distant shores and makes its way towards us like a steam ship, like a migration. Time, your creature, our sibling and companion, orbits us.
How will we greet it: as a child of your mercy or an angel of your justice or an incarnation of your endurance? Continue reading
Posted in current events, poetry, prayer
Tagged Matthew 24:37-39, Matthew 6:34, new year resolutions, New Year's Eve, psalm 118:24
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Holy Innocents: transferred
There must have been others who retracedtheir ancestors’ footprints over Sinai,although no Moses basket launched upon the Nile;instead, the Innocents wakened from a nightmareby the whisper of a blade, the fadingmemory of mothers’ final, ululating lullaby… Innocence today plays with … Continue reading
Holy Innocents: a pieta
The stoles are cobbled together from whatever orange fabric I can lay my hands on in any given season; the constant that binds them together as a family – except for the orange colour – is the children’s handprint pattern that finishes each one off at the ends… Continue reading
Posted in gun violence, holy days, story
Tagged #WearOrange, gun violence, Holy Innocents, Jesus, orange stoles
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All in the family way
It seems as though the depth and strength and sheer closeness of God’s love for us defies any single image of relationship that we can dredge up and dress in poetic language. God is our father and our mother and our lover.
And then, and then, God became flesh, and dwelt among us. Continue reading
Word, wordless
A brief message for Christmas Day If, like me, you have memories from long before you learned how to talk, then you know that even before it speaks an infant tells itself stories and lays them down, woven into the … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, homily
Tagged Christmas Day, John 1:1-14, John's Prologue, Word of God
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Emmanuel
Emmanuel Away from the crush of the crowd and the hubbub of the inn, aside in the stableChrist is born;in the silence that prepares for his first breath,God speaks: “I am with you.”
The longest night
Morning after the longest night,like the first day of creationwhen evening fell before the dawn;as the dream goes before awakening,the linened tomb before resurrection,the twilight womb before the birthof the Christ, all partand particular to his Incarnation,this nurturing dark that … Continue reading
Posted in advent meditations, poetry, prayer
Tagged Incarnation, longest night, solstice
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Mary’s song, our song
The name Mary cried havoc and announced the day of the Lord’s deliverance from the bonds of oppression. Mary’s word to the angel, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord,” was the acceptance of a mantle, the mantle of Miriam, the sister and peer of Moses. Mary’s, “Let it be with me” was saying, in effect, “Bring it on.” Continue reading
Posted in advent meditations, current events, sermon
Tagged Christian, Incarnation, Magnificat, Mariamme, Miriam, naming, Song of Mary
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Suffer the little children
Rumours of rumours; and the rub is that in this country, in this time, we cannot dismiss them until the day is done and the sun has set over the farthest gate. It should not be this way. Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence
Tagged gun violence, Isaiah 11:6, school shooting, TikTok challenge
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over the water 