Category Archives: holy days

The gifts of the wise ones

Posted on January 9, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

The Feast of the Epiphany is a new year of sorts for us, the people of Epiphany. Who knows what this one will bring. But if we are able to keep our hearts and minds and expectations open; if we deploy the gifts of humility, creativity, faith that the magi, the wise ones have taught us, then we may find unexpected grace, unlooked-for epiphanies, the glory of God waiting for us to stumble upon it as the year takes shape, growing like a child, full of curiosity, wonder, and delight.  Continue reading →

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When worlds collide

Posted on January 6, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

Today, while our church celebrates and ruminates on the revelation of Christ to the nations – the arrival of the magi at the manger and their joyful homage to the child they recognized as the saviour of the world – the news cycle is full of analysis, unresolved shock, and grief over what happened and what so nearly happened to our nation a year ago today. Continue reading →

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By another road

Posted on January 5, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

It was not the journeya wise person would have plannedwith toddlers in tow, wakenedby the stuttering motion of a carstuck in traffic,jammed in their seats while the worldhemmed us in behind and before,each shining roof the baked tileshell of a … Continue reading →

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Holy Innocents: transferred

Posted on December 28, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

There must have been others who retracedtheir ancestors’ footprints over Sinai,although no Moses basket launched upon the Nile;instead, the Innocents wakened from a nightmareby the whisper of a blade, the fadingmemory of mothers’ final, ululating lullaby… Innocence today plays with … Continue reading →

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Holy Innocents: a pieta

Posted on December 28, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

The stoles are cobbled together from whatever orange fabric I can lay my hands on in any given season; the constant that binds them together as a family – except for the orange colour – is the children’s handprint pattern that finishes each one off at the ends… Continue reading →

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Word, wordless

Posted on December 25, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

A brief message for Christmas Day If, like me, you have memories from long before you learned how to talk, then you know that even before it speaks an infant tells itself stories and lays them down, woven into the … Continue reading →

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Emmanuel

Posted on December 24, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

Emmanuel Away from the crush of the crowd and the hubbub of the inn, aside in the stableChrist is born;in the silence that prepares for his first breath,God speaks: “I am with you.”

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Advent (the second coming)

Posted on November 26, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

There is no cloud of glory can define, no gates of heaven can confine; there is no dogma, doggerel, or doctrine can describe, no earnest imitation reinscribe him.  Christ’s coming cannot be constrained or restrained by our rituals of mortality.Our candles are dimmed, our illuminated manuscripts … Continue reading →

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Christ, the King, the way, the truth, the life

Posted on November 21, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

Standing before Pilate, Jesus conjures a vision of a kingdom in which the truth is not decided by the preferences of the powerful, nor is justice exacted by violence, nor does the law of the nations have the last word over it. The kingdom that Jesus brings is one in which the love of God stands resolute before the principalities that would lord it over him, and undermines them by refusing to accept the finality of their penalty of death. Continue reading →

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For All Saints and All Souls

Posted on November 7, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

He has dwelt with us as our God; we are his people,
and God is with us; and as surely as Jesus wept for his own friend,
he will one day wipe every tear from our eyes. (after Revelation 21:1-6) Continue reading →

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