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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
Sufficient
I came to you out of driving need: a child’s wailing, howling hunger for bread and tenderness. You fed me loaves of love wrapped in wrinkled hands and silver Now it is my need holds me at bay: the need … Continue reading
Posted in poetry, prayer
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Undertow
I went to the water filled with chaos, foaming with worry, frothy with fear; I went to the water cold as winter, opaque as oil. I went to the water to see your Spirit spraying the rocks with invisible ink, animation drawn out of … Continue reading
Beating Guns
I wrote this morning at the RevGalBlogPals site about my Holy Week encounter with Shane Claiborne’ and Michael Martin’s #BeatingGuns tour. God Before Guns co-hosted the event with Pilgrim UCC in Tremont, Cleveland. Read more about it at RevGals; see … Continue reading
Posted in story
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Reconciling love
Into this covenant Ann and Ben now come to be married. May their witness to the love and faithfulness of Christ warm our hearts, our may our joy at their union be reckoned to us as a reconciling righteousness. Amen. Continue reading
Easter 2019: no idle tale
When the women returned from the empty tomb, they told the men all of this, and they thought that it was just another idle tale like so many others. How could they, even after all they had seen, fail to recognize that Jesus is like no other? But, to be fair, perhaps we too often treat the resurrection like a pretty myth that changes nothing much. Continue reading
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Easter, Harrowing of Hell, Luke 24:1-12, Resurrection
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Why have we come here? Good Friday 2019
We come not to glory in his death, but out of fear of our own; and not only, nor even the death of our bodies, may they never endure such pain as his; but the death of our souls, the diminishing returns of our humanity, the erosion of love and the weary wearing away of compassion. On the cross, we see the destitution of our humanity, what it has come to, that we would sacrifice Christ to keep an unquiet peace, and pile on the death of God to weight the scales of injustice. We see where it could all end up, if we would prefer instruments of death to a way of life that makes us vulnerable to the demands of love and of mercy. Continue reading
Posted in holy days, homily, sermon, story
Tagged angels, cross, Good Friday, hope, Jesus, reserved sacrament
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Maundy Thursday: the end of love
Love is a decision. It is our choice to make, and we cannot make the excuse that someone else destroyed it, if Jesus washed Judas’ feet, and healed the ear of the servant sent to arrest him, and restrained the angels from coming down from heaven to frighten the hell out of Herod and that weasel, Pontius Pilate, letting love be his gospel, and his end. Continue reading
Posted in holy days, homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Jesus, love, Maundy Thursday
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Tenebrae
Scarlet shadows seeping backward from the cross; cruel fascination draws us to the flame like moths, extinguished one by one; love like an earthquake sends us trembling toward the tomb
Kind conspiracy
Sun low, river high, Nature’s un-kind conspiring to blind Narcissus.
over the water 