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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
The truth will make you free
To preach the commemoration of Frederick Douglass is an exercise in humility for a white woman of considerable privilege. To try to bring his words and example to bear upon the way in which we hear the gospel today, without reduction or exploitation or appropriation, is an exercise in repentance. My repentance will not be perfect, so I ask your forgiveness up front. Continue reading
Posted in homily
Tagged Frederick Douglass, Kelly Brown Douglas, racism, slaveholder Christianity, White supremacy
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Mere mortals
Consider the vision of God’s kingdom that Jesus offers: a world in which the poor have power; where the bereft are comforted. Where profits are harvested as food for the hungry, with ploughshares beaten out of pistols. Where the name Pulse has not been perverted to echo with death and anger, but resumes its resonance of life, and love. Where Aurora means the halo of light around the moon, giving glory to God with all the heavenly bodies, and we no longer ask, do you mean the one in Colorado, or the one in Illinois? Where the south side of Chicago is simply the sunny side of the street. Where the Tree of Life grows green in the Garden of Eden. A kingdom where the name Parkland conjures up, not the valley of the shadow of death, but a quiet place, green pastures beside still waters. Continue reading
Posted in gun violence, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged #Parkland, a year C Epiphany 6, Aurora, gun violence, Jeremiah, Jesus, kingdom of God, Pulse, Tree of Life
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Thaw
Create in me a new heart, O God (Psalm 51:11a) Wind trills taughtly-anchored telegraph wires. A stave of birds compose an arpeggio, ready for flight. Hedges shrug off the gusts and hold the line, but Something is trying to stir … Continue reading
Book Review: Outlandish, by Derek Penwell
I appreciated the extended argument for the use of sarcasm as a discipleship tool. Skewering broods of vipers, after all, is quite biblical. Continue reading
What the world needs now
“Don’t be afraid,” says Jesus, “From now on you will be catching people.” Simon, James, and John looked at the great crowd gathered on the sea shore to hear Jesus, to see Jesus, to find Jesus. And they put down their nets, and followed Jesus into the country, into the crowd, who needed more than anything to know the presence of the living God among them. Continue reading
Wednesday Morning Prayer
Reposted from the Episcopal Cafe. The recommended Canticle for use after the first testament reading at Morning Prayer on a Wednesday is Surge, illuminare: Rise and shine. On a day like any other buses ran, some on time buskers sang, … Continue reading
Posted in poetry, prayer
Tagged Daily Office, Isaiah 60:1, morning prayer, Wednesday canticles
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Love all the way down
A sermon for the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany in Year C, the annual meeting of Epiphany parish, Euclid, and the Solemn Sung Eucharist at Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland. The main text for this sermon is Paul’s ode to love in 1 Corinthians 13. Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged 1 Corinthians 1:3, Jeremiah 1:4-10, love, Luke 4, Year C Epiphany 4
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Falling
Precipitated by clever argument between gravity, ice, and the presumption of free will, bruised as creation, blue and green, concussed like goatskin stretched and pounding – the serpent, sliding snidely by, hisses something about pride, a fig leaf, and the … Continue reading
Winter prayer
Snow has fallen, slurring my footsteps, skewing my pathway to prayer. Only become as a child, you say: trade caution for the headlong hurtle; build snowmen, not as idols but monument to the meeting of flesh and raw air.
Water, wine, and justice like an ever-flowing stream
On sabbatical, I visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I can’t begin to describe briefly the impact of walking that history of inhumanity and human dignity set up in opposition to one another, the weight of those ceilings, each one a century, and the heaviness of your footsteps as you climb closer to our own day of reckoning. Continue reading
over the water 