Author Archives: Rosalind C Hughes

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About Rosalind C Hughes

Rosalind C Hughes is an Episcopal priest, poet, and author living near the shores of Lake Erie. After growing up in England and Wales, and living briefly in Singapore, she is now settled in Ohio. Rosalind is the author of A Family Like Mine: Biblical Stories of Love, Loss, and Longing , and Whom Shall I Fear? Urgent Questions for Christians in an Age of Violence, both from Upper Room Books. She loves the lake, misses the ocean, and is finally coming to terms with snow.

Olive branches over ordnance

The olive trees, ancient and observant, hearing the blood that cries out from the land, whisper that the answer to Cain’s crime cannot be to take the hoe from his hand and hand him an AR-15. Continue reading

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What will we do?

We participate in one another’s futures. So we will offer our presence, our presence of mind, our best efforts to love one another in word, in deed, by statute. Continue reading

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Inspire

Why wait for inspiration when before the breath that catches on creation, shucks life into eternity, expires before the face of God aspired the Spirit had already taken wing, hefting feathers into flight, breaching the horizon of the first Word, advent of the … Continue reading

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We talked about this

Shackled to the shadows of a brutalist building, words barely grazing our lips, we talked about this. Our breath stirred the air, that sabbath exhalation at the end of creation; the wordless sigh of God.

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Why I take pictures of cats

Above the Monastery in Petra, signs direct visitors to some of the very Best Views.
We scrambled towards the Best View in the World.
It was a very good view. There was also, of course, a small cat. Continue reading

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Trust

A man whose last name we didn’t know, whom we had met last night, pointed out a narrowing canyon and said, “Walk that way. I’ll meet you on the other side.” Continue reading

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Dead Sea Prayer

Floating in brine designed not for propagating but for pickling; Suspended between peace and petrification, love and devotion. When will your waters break afresh, bringing a new creation to its first astonished breath?

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Morning prayer

A rabbit, startled by the
gas-powered scythe scuttered,
white tail exposed,
exiting garden right. Continue reading

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Salt and sabbatical

But that is the theology of Thomas the Tank Engine, who longs only to hear the Fat Controller call him “a useful little engine.” It is not the theology found in the Bible nor in the Word of God, Jesus the Christ, who celebrates the meek and the helpless, the poor in spirit and the hopeless, the errant and the outcast, the ungodlike. Continue reading

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Conjuring Esther

Esther has become difficult to read. Her story makes me angry and afraid. We read it like a fairytale. But like so many fairytales, it teems with themes of horror dressed up in satin and silk. Continue reading

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