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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
Good tenants
But there is no bluster that can deceive God. There is no violence that can bend God’s will away from the justice, the tender mercy, the harvest of righteousness that God has planted. This disruption, this violence, this evil will not be allowed to stand. Continue reading
Standing up to Stand Your Ground: an open letter
We are not at war with one another. We are not at war with our fellow citizens or other Ohio residents. We do not need a law that assumes an attitude of antagonism between neighbors. Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence
Tagged #StandWithOhio, Matthew 26:52, racism, stand your ground laws
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Word, will, work
A sermon for September 27, 2020, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio. This week Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lay in state at the Capitol. The US passed a grim milestone with 200,000 deaths from COVID-19. One … Continue reading
God gets maternal anxiety
My friend and my mentor each touched upon that near-fatal intersection of parenting and perfectionism that will plague me with anxiety until the kingdom come. Does God, that perfect Parent, suffer anxiety? Continue reading
Posted in meditation, other words, spiritual autobiography
Tagged anxiety, clergy women, Embodied, Lee Ann Pomrenke, motherhood
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Undertow
Ripping tides, throwing horses, hurling seabirds to the sky, thrashing rock into sand, wrecking the abandoned homes of limpets and clams, reducing it all to grit and foam, beaching itself in exhaustion, receding; the sand dries, the rock stands and … Continue reading
Posted in poetry, prayer
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Absolute mercy
Josephs’ brothers were afraid that his mercy was not real, because they could not imagine being that merciful themselves. The servant was afraid that his king would change his mind and call in his debt after all, and his mistrust of mercy, and his failure to multiply it, made him do terrible things, and led to his own downfall, and perpetuated the systems of injustice that surrounded him. Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged bail funds, debtors' prison, forgiveness, Genesis 50:15-21, Matthew 18:21-35, mercy, parables
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Bless, and do not curse or kill
Peter is angry, I’m angry, and we each struggle to see the way forward.
Then there’s Jesus.
Do not set your mind on earthly things, he admonishes. Don’t get mired in anger and defeat. Do heal the sick, do bring good news to the poor, do raise up the broken-hearted; but don’t confuse crucifixion with failure. Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, sermon, story
Tagged BLM, Christ, cross, Hebrews 12:1-2, Jacob Blake, Kenosha, Matthew 16:21-28, Romans 12:9-21, Violence
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Friday
Breaking open pistachios by the Friday fire, pitching shells toward the pit. I wonder whom the meat of casements that arrive empty fed. Others refuse to open, peeling back my thumb nails; I surrender, hurl them to the fire. A … Continue reading
Crumbs
If Jesus was putting on a scene in order to convict his disciples of their own exclusionary, xenophobic, racist, sexist, selfish attitudes towards the woman – “Make her go away!” they say. “Make her stop talking” – then we have yet fully to learn our lesson. Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Canaanite woman, difference, Jesus, racism, sexism, Syro-phoenician woman, xenophobia
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Elements of creation, currency of compassion
What would we pay to defray the risk of storing explosive chemicals among people’s living spaces? What would we give for an economy that could never be said to depend upon a thousand deaths per day from pandemic to stay afloat? What would we confront in order to be able to offer a cup of clean water to the children of Flint?
What would it take for us to get out of the boat? Continue reading
over the water 