Category Archives: holy days

The Visitation

I love that, for a moment, you embraced, neither wondering how the other came to be in her loosened state, knowing next to nothing of the contractions to come, spasms of envy slaughtering the innocents and the barely belated, cruel blows which would fell them both, … Continue reading

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Pentecost 2023: Would that all of God’s people would prophesy!

Medad and Eldad were not silenced. Peter, when the people grumbled and dismissed the disciples as drunk and deluded, said, “Nah, the bars aren’t even open for brunch yet!” They knew that they had their commission directly from the Holy Spirit. And I wonder what it was that Eldad and Medad were saying to the people in the camp, the ones getting on with their daily lives, prophesying in the midst of them while the elders and elite were pontificating from the outside… Continue reading

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Ascension (2023)

With skin like an apple streaked with red, weathered toward ripeness, her hair a wood-stained frame for the pearl earring, moon to her sun, the woman in the seat in front never turned her face to me but from the … Continue reading

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Easter 2023: it’s (still) a love story

It isn’t like any love story we could conjure up, because it is true, a true story: Jesus lived among us, the Son of God was crucified, descended to the dead, and on the third day rose again, and he could not wait to greet his beloved disciples on the road, could not wait to see their shining, astonished faces; he could not wait to love them back. Continue reading

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A special place

To celebrate the day of its harrowing, and because the phrase came up again just the other day … Continue reading

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Good Friday

The cross is a mirror. It shows us what we are not, as well as what we are; the embodiment of God, the epitome of humanity: images mundane and immortal in one body.The cross is a mirror.  The cross is a mirror.  The hammer falls and innocent flesh … Continue reading

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Maundy Thursday message

This, for me, was the tragedy of Judas: that he couldn’t see how much God loved him, even when God was right in front of him, washing his feet. Continue reading

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Triduum

While the dough was doing its thing, I went out to the forge, made one more cross out of gun barrels. Continue reading

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Thursday

We pray in awkward whispers against the reredos of white towels fumbling over nervous feet held in stumbling hands, certain of nothing but betrayal, the cross to come, and sunset’s pale inversion in the water

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Hosanna – save us!

We are used to thinking of them as the same crowd, moving from one Sunday to the next, but what if they were more like us: divided among themselves, one crying one thing and one another, each with their own ideas of whom should be saved, and how? Continue reading

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