Category Archives: current events

Teach us to pray

The story that Jesus tells suggests that we are in this together; that while one person is begging for bread, the one who is secure, safe and comfortable and tucked up in bed with their well-fed children, is the one who is called upon to answer, “and in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God.” Continue reading

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Bread

Bread

Who, in the night,
would give their neighbour stones
and say, “Here, make bread.” Continue reading

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Mother’s Day

Including words from the original Mother’s Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe The very Earth is heaving beneath the weight of war. Fire consumes and leaves no food for the rest of God’s creatures; lead pollutes the soil, the seas, the … Continue reading

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The death of Simeon

Simeon, a man full of the Spirit of God, had been told by that same Spirit that he would live to see the face of God. What more could a man want? Yet who could see God and live? Continue reading

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Anna in the sanctuary

Widowed, but not alone, shrouded in the living stone of temple prayers woven as a garment of grace haunting the holy place, sanctified and sanctifying the very air with praise. She would not follow them to Egypt, return with them … Continue reading

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A prayer out of time

O God, take up this day, cradle it like the newborn thing that it is, turn it this way and see the pink sunrise, the bruise of clouds, the barely-lit night which to you is as bright as the day, … Continue reading

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Mercy

filled with the power of the Spirit, the prophet found the place where it was written: good news to the poor,  release to the captives,and recovery of sight to the blind, The Spirit of the Lord haslet the oppressed go free    –  as … Continue reading

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What heals history?

We enter this new year, and this new season after Christmas, with some trepidation, don’t we? We are haunted by the shadows of the past, concerned for the present, warned by the violence that greeted the new year in New Orleans and Nevada and far beyond; our hopes and fears for the future year clash and mingle in the air like smoke. 
And yet this is the Feast-day, the celebration of the Epiphany, the manifestation of God’s incarnation to the nations, to us. The bright promise that God is with us, even us. Continue reading

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New Year’s resolutions

More Jesus, less judgement More Magnificat, less might makes right More mercy, less Schadenfreude More love, less envy More transformation, less conformation More inspiration, less trepidation More Jesus, less me More Jesus 

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The compassion of Christ

The compassionate life is tricky enough in the everyday, and my guess is that even the least political among us will find our last nerve twanged by the rhetoric and anxiety and all that will pile onto the social psyche in the coming months. We may be tempted to try to love our enemies into submission. We may be tempted to try to grind out compassion through our clenched teeth. We will not succeed unless we are grounded in the love of Christ … Continue reading

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