Category Archives: holy days

Making room

Posted on December 24, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Still, into this tight and griping world, Jesus is born, with the effortful but determined, sometimes complicated but unanswerable, slow but urgent pangs of labour, the contract between heaven and earth that will not be denied. God finds room, becoming small enough to be swaddled and laid in a manger, as the glory of the new covenant splits open the skies and lets the angels loose. Continue reading →

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Dreamers

Posted on December 22, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

On the night before Jesus died, his closest friend denied three times that he even knew the man. In the nights before Jesus was born, Joseph dreamed. Would we be ready to stake our reputation on the acknowledgement that yes, Jesus is the Son of God; that yes, the way of the Cross, the way of self-giving, selfless, vengeance-denying love is the way to life, liberty, and the pursuit of heaven; that yes, Jesus, born of Mary, is God Incarnate, Emmanuel, God with us? Continue reading →

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For all the saints

Posted on November 3, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Even your tears are formed from living water. Even your hunger is a sign of God’s blessing, a sign that you know, deep in your belly, that God has more for you, that God intends you for greater satisfaction. That is the faith of the apocalyptic visionaries: that already, God is making all things new, that death’s days are numbered. Continue reading →

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All Souls

Posted on October 30, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

O eternal Lord God, who holdest all souls in life … (Book of Common Prayer, 202) Continue reading →

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Dust

Posted on September 6, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Between fire and the sky- cold stars trading embers, we are smoke: dust, ash, and air rising and falling

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Trinity Sunday, 2019

Posted on June 16, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Within God’s perfect being is the reconciliation of relationship, the interplay of love, the communication of difference and solidarity. Those aspects of God promise that we are understood, that we are accepted in all of our difference, diversity, struggle, and longing; that within the heart of a God who knows all about it from experience, we are healed. Within the heart of a God who knows even brokenness, betrayal, the shadow sides of love, we are recognized, accepted, restored. Continue reading →

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Pentecost 2019: Come, Holy Spirit

Posted on June 9, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

The Spirit has been present since before the birth of creation, brooding over the waters of the uncreated deep. She breathed life into the nostrils of the first human animals, according to the old stories. She has never been far from us. The trick is to catch sight of the movement of her wings, to hear the vibrations that she creates, the rush of air, the breath of heaven. Continue reading →

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On Pentecost

Posted on June 8, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Few languages are universal. That we have made the gun one of them is blasphemy against the Spirit who brooded over creation; ever the image of life. Would that we would bury the language of death under love, even if the mockery … Continue reading →

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Ascension (when necessary)

Posted on May 29, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

When resurrection is not enough; when, beyond the empty tomb, mud sucks footsteps back toward hell; flash flood waters, falling, leave a ring around your soul, and the sky too close for comfort, despite miracles of incarnation, resurrection; ascension gives … Continue reading →

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Easter 2019: no idle tale

Posted on April 21, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

When the women returned from the empty tomb, they told the men all of this, and they thought that it was just another idle tale like so many others. How could they, even after all they had seen, fail to recognize that Jesus is like no other? But, to be fair, perhaps we too often treat the resurrection like a pretty myth that changes nothing much. Continue reading →

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