Category Archives: holy days

Ascension (2023)

Posted on May 25, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

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

Posted on April 9, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

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

Posted on April 8, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

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

Posted on April 7, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

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

Posted on April 6, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

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

Posted on April 6, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

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

Posted on April 4, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

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!

Posted on April 2, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

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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Preaching from the shadows

Posted on March 28, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

The sound of mallet on metal
wood and splintered flesh
ricochets around the city walls
shivering the fabric of
the crowd that clothes the alleyways
too often lost in thought and prayers
we fall without an echo
into the open grave Continue reading →

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Quick, quick, slow

Posted on March 14, 2023 by Rosalind C Hughes

A little Lenten story When my children were small, I didn’t forget their names – how could I? – yet as often as not my tongue would take two or three wrong turnings on its way to the beloved standing … Continue reading →

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