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.

Murdering Truth

It seems as though when we have beaten truth into our own image, and still it insists on speaking its own mind, we wash our hands of it. We make enemies of purveyors of inconvenient information. We shoot the messenger. Continue reading

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David and Goliath

Jesus tells us several times that if we want to see God at work, we could do worse than to look to the children. “Let the little children come to me,” he said, “for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs;” and again, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” Continue reading

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Deliver us from evil

As a Christian I am bound by the Law to love God and to love my neighbor. As an Episcopalian I have promised to respect the dignity of every human being. As an American citizen, I am horrified that our government is using the forced removal of children to punish and intimidate parents who would seek asylum, refuge, or simply a home in these United States. Such practice is antithetical to human dignity, human rights, and God’s intention for the human family. Continue reading

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Fraction

The crack of the communion host like a whip, like bone, like the click of handcuffs; how far we have roamed from the upper room: warm bread softly torn, love-fuelled bodies, blood fired by passion’s wine. You come to us … Continue reading

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The madness of Christ Jesus

The Wisdom of God is, as has been well-documented, foolishness to the wise philosopher. Utter foolishness. Continue reading

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Feline mortal

till holding himself somewhat apart, as though some part of him were ready, already, for the next mile of his journey, perhaps he remembered that love is the greater part of life, that relationship is a surer path to wisdom even than philosophy. Continue reading

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What I might have said otherwise

God speaks through the children to wake us up to the call we have as Christians: to proclaim the love of God in word and deed, in all that we say and do, working with God to create good even out of all that goes wrong and awry in this world, knowing that God has created it, has created us, for God’s good purposes, and out of God’s unmitigated love. Continue reading

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Spring fever

Riptide currents race through green fields revealing their true colours, wrecking sirens’ songs, drowning desire with their own unfettered appetites; they stain the earth with lively riot, catching into their whirling dance flotsam and jetsam, driftwood that passes this way, … Continue reading

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One/three/seven billion

It matters that we know a God who will not allow for isolation, or desolation, who does not disown God’s children, but who sets out time and again, through the prophets, through the wilderness, through the sacraments, through the Spirit to remind us that we are not only created in God’s image, but that God has committed Godself to us, irrevocably, unbreakably. Continue reading

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Pentecost: love and fire

If fire represents the Holy Spirit, then we have blasphemed the Spirit of God by making fire the creature of our destruction instead of the essence of our life.

The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, cannot be tamed, and does not destroy when given free reign, because she is not our creature to control, but she is the very essence of God, who is love. Continue reading

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