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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
On the need to pray, and not to lose heart
I pray so as not to lose that heart of God that keeps insisting that justice is possible, that mercy is reasonable, that resurrection is coming. I pray, not so that I can change anyone else’s mind, let alone God’s, but so that God, by her insistence and irritating persistence can change my own heart and mind, bringing them more in alignment with the will and word of God. I pray so as not to lose heart, to hear over and over and over again that widow’s word that God’s justice is eternal, preexisting, loaded with mercy, and final. Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, prayer, sermon
Tagged Black Lives Matter, Charles Fager, Jeremiah 31:30, John Fischer, judge, Luke 18:1-8, Matthew 7:1, prayer, salvation, widow
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I should get out more
In my collar, I notice people respond to me passing them by, for better or for worse. I smile, pass the time of day. Then someone stopped me short: ”Don’t you remember me?” Continue reading
What are we worth?
No matter what we do, it is no more than Christ has ordered us to do, no more than our baptismal promises to resist evil, to strive for justice and peace among all people, to respect the life and dignity of every human being; to become slaves to the love of God and of God’s family in creation.
But, “worthless”? Continue reading
To move mountains
When she was old and fading –
her gray hair paling,
her skin thinning and softening –
my grandmother painted watercolours. Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, sermon preparation, story
Tagged Bob Ross, dementia, faith, imagination, Luke 17:5, mustard seed, Year C Proper 22
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Word and deed
Prophets, true prophets, are truth-tellers. They are not in the prophecy business for popularity. Unlike politicians, their constituency is not power brokers but the poor in spirit, the people of God who seek hope not in empires and armies but in the word of God, God’s promise to their ancestors to walk with them and not to leave them lost and alone. Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Body of Christ, Jeremiah 32:1-15, Jesus, power, prophecy, word and deed, Word of God, Year C Proper 21
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100 orange stoles
In 2016, in the run-up to the second annual National Gun Violence Awareness Day, I began making orange stoles to bring the #WearOrange movement, with its focus on life and hope, back to church. It wasn’t exactly nor entirely my … Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, story
Tagged #WearOrange, orange stoles, Sojourners
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How to read the Bible
There is a section in one of my church Bibles called, “How to read the Bible.” My curiosity says I ought to check it out; my concern wonders if it isn’t a bit late for that by this point in … Continue reading
#DoSomething
Expanding background checks makes us accountable to one another for the spread and distribution of deadly weapons. Red flag laws would be, I believe, an Act of compassion. We might even find, as we re-examine our relationship with guns, that we do not need them as much, or as many, or to hold them as close as we have thought. Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence
Tagged #dosomething, #WearOrange, citizenship, gun violence, Ohio, orange stole movement
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prayer incarnate
How did you pray, body and breath, those wilderness days beneath stars that made promises, sand through your hands counting moments since creation, each grain an erosion of the whole; how did you pray, body and spirit sticky with honey … Continue reading
Posted in meditation, poetry, prayer
Tagged desert, Incarnation, Jesus, prayer, wildnerness
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Dust
Between fire and the sky- cold stars trading embers, we are smoke: dust, ash, and air rising and falling
Posted in holy days, poetry, prayer
Tagged Ash Wednesday, ashes to ashes, creation, dust to dust, fire
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over the water 