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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
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
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection, prayer, sermon preparation
Tagged Trinity
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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
Book review: Denial is my spiritual practice, Hackenberg & Spong
I recommend that you acquire a copy, and keep it close for those moments when, for the sake of faith or sanity, you need to find yourself reflected in the mirror of another soul that has wrestled with life and with God. Continue reading
Eleison
Christ, have mercy, we expostulate once more. Continue reading
Posted in current events, poetry, prayer, story
Tagged #SantaFeShooting, #thoughtsandprayers, gun violence, school shootings
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The prayer bear
God as the she-bear protecting her cubs kept coming back around to haunt us. Continue reading
Posted in prayer, story
Tagged childhood, comfort, expansive language, illness, images of God
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The prayer of a lost Leviathan
My Creator, when you made sea monsters for sport, why would you not make me buoyant, flattening the waves, smoothing surfaces, resting zen-like on the moon’s reflection, bathed beautiful by her silver light; why not fiercely playful, breaking unexpectedly, tossing … Continue reading
Our own devices
Small victories, born of God, have a profound effect on the people who encounter them. Small victories born of God, born of love, grow up to conquer the world Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon, story
Tagged 1 John 4, baptism, beloved community, Constantine, cross
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Love/hate/relationship
“Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen,” warns the letter writer, and if we are in any way human, our heart sinks. We know whereof we are guilty. Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon, sermon preparation
Tagged 1 John 4, abide, family, hate, James Cone, John 15:1-8, love, Year B Easter 5
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Mark the urgent evangelist
The word, “immediately,” occurs more than twenty times in Mark’s sixteen brief chapters. There is an urgency to his proclamation of the “good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God” which has its own profound beauty. Continue reading
Stealing the gospel
More guns bring more violence, and we have had enough of the ‘gall of bitterness and the chains of wickedness.’ Continue reading
Posted in gun violence, homily, meditation, sermon
Tagged Acts 8:9-25, Columbine, gospel, gun violence, nonviolence, NRA, Simon the Magician
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over the water 