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Category Archives: holy days
Trinity Sunday: playing favourites
Is it wrong to have a favourite person of the Trinity?
One of the things I love about Trinity Sunday, which is always the first Sunday after Pentecost, is how we find ourselves thrown into confusion by the image of a God who is One, who is Three, who is Spirit, who is Incarnate, who has known breath and who breathed breath into being. We are tempted to try to make sense of it all, with pictures and patterns of three-leafed clovers and Celtic knots. But God is not a mathematical problem, and God – while we can see God everywhere – God will always be more than our vision can contain, or our words describe, or our hearts need.
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Posted in holy days, homily, sermon
Tagged Genesis 1, Great Commission, Trinity Sunday
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Incongruity (or, Fireworks at Pentecost)
No gentle breeze to nurse the flames but a gust, a buffet that knocks out other sources of power, so that all we see is one another’s wonder by light of a fire that reveals, does not obliterate the features … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, poetry, preparing for Sunday with poetry
Tagged #preparingforSundaywithpoetry, Pentecost
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Was it necessary?
We do not have Pharaoh’s excuse, whose heart by God was hardened, but from that evening in the garden we have pursued our own destruction. We cannot claim we didn’t know, with the fruit still sweet on our tongue. Was it necessary? Better ask the serpent, … Continue reading
No longer Monday
It’s not Monday any more, but the scent still lingers in the house when they awaken, and Lazarus is grateful for the distraction; he hardly knows himself these days, still amazed at the complicated gift of life. The echoes of … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection
Tagged Holy Week, Isaiah 42, Jesus, John 12:1-11, Lazarus
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If these were quiet …
Think of the palms, crushed and bruised by the colt and the crowds, and of the ones who came back, the poor, the quiet, who came back to collect their broken stems and bleeding leaves, and wove them into something new, something to sell back to … Continue reading
The Fast
Is it this, that I would choose, to undo the latches, throw open the doors, empty the warehouses, let in the light, let out the breath, let in the light, let out the breath of the people bated, bated too long, to fast from the bread … Continue reading
Posted in current events, holy days, poetry, prayer
Tagged Ash Wednesday, fast, Lent
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Stay (Transfiguration)
Less a trick of the Lightcondensing out of the cloud, each droplet its own world of shapes and shades, ghosts of the martyred, those sidekicks of salvation, dissipating with their breath than the Light of the world condensing creation, ancestors and angels,witnesses and wantons in one bright moment … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer, preparing for Sunday with poetry, sermon preparation
Tagged Epiphany, hope, Last Sunday after the Epiphany, light of the world, Luke 9:28-36, Mark 9:2-8, martyrs, MAtthew 17:1-9, Transfiguration, Valley of the shadow of death
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Intended
That was the vision in which Joseph placed his faith and his family: that God is with us, God’s promises endure forever. It didn’t make life easier, by any means. God knows it didn’t remove the obstacles of grief and the graft and grimness of the world or the wilderness, its empires, its wars, its little kings.
But what it did mean is that he, Joseph, spent the rest of his days in the close and intimate presence of the love of God among us, Jesus. Continue reading
Posted in current events, holy days, homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
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Wise
By the time you reached the star-struck place
you were ready to crawl in on bended knees
and babble your praises like a newborn;
for the foolishness of God’s incarnation
was wiser than you or I ever could imagine. Continue reading
Christmas Eve 2025
This is the message of Christmas, isn’t it – not so much the drawing in and closing down, the drawing of the curtains against the dark and cold, as it is the opening up; the labour of effacing little by little the things that come between us and keep us from seeing the glory of God incarnate in our neighbours, from realizing the strength and endurance of God’s love, the capacity and tenacity of God’s mercy. When the very heavens are opened for angels to sing to shepherds on the earth, how can we be short of room for one another, friend and stranger, lover and lost, family and fallen alike? Continue reading
over the water 