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A Family Like Mine: Biblical Stories of Love, Loss, and Longing
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Category Archives: story
I should get out more
In my collar, I notice people respond to me passing them by, for better or for worse. I smile, pass the time of day. Then someone stopped me short: ”Don’t you remember me?” Continue reading
To move mountains
When she was old and fading –
her gray hair paling,
her skin thinning and softening –
my grandmother painted watercolours. Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, sermon preparation, story
Tagged Bob Ross, dementia, faith, imagination, Luke 17:5, mustard seed, Year C Proper 22
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100 orange stoles
In 2016, in the run-up to the second annual National Gun Violence Awareness Day, I began making orange stoles to bring the #WearOrange movement, with its focus on life and hope, back to church. It wasn’t exactly nor entirely my … Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, story
Tagged #WearOrange, orange stoles, Sojourners
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A prayer for the absence of miracles
Swimming as an act of faith: Faith in the friendliness of the great lake, doorway to the deep- seated sediment of creation; Faith in the body to carry its cargo through the waves, inspired by the brooding, hovering breath of … Continue reading
Everything comes with a side of guns
I did not have the time to wonder deeply why a construction company, expert in damp recovery and replastering, thought that an active shooter drill would be right up their alley (nor why we would call them first in the unfortunate event). I did not have the wherewithal in that Thursday moment to explain my theological aversion to drilling fear into our worship, or the stubborn resistance to the inevitably of guns everywhere that stems from the sanctuary of my foolish faith. Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, story
Tagged Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day, fear, mass shooting, nonviolence
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Go back home
On my better days, I might take the time to explain that it would be more appropriate not to choose any person’s story for them, assuming a whole lot about their history, their identity, their family, their future. Continue reading
Stronghold
On a mountain of modest height, rendered in verse for its appetite for irony and steadfastness, they found the man, the poets say, guarding his skeleton where it lay. The way to the summit is strewn with the rubble of … Continue reading
Beating Guns
I wrote this morning at the RevGalBlogPals site about my Holy Week encounter with Shane Claiborne’ and Michael Martin’s #BeatingGuns tour. God Before Guns co-hosted the event with Pilgrim UCC in Tremont, Cleveland. Read more about it at RevGals; see … Continue reading
Posted in story
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Why have we come here? Good Friday 2019
We come not to glory in his death, but out of fear of our own; and not only, nor even the death of our bodies, may they never endure such pain as his; but the death of our souls, the diminishing returns of our humanity, the erosion of love and the weary wearing away of compassion. On the cross, we see the destitution of our humanity, what it has come to, that we would sacrifice Christ to keep an unquiet peace, and pile on the death of God to weight the scales of injustice. We see where it could all end up, if we would prefer instruments of death to a way of life that makes us vulnerable to the demands of love and of mercy. Continue reading
Posted in holy days, homily, sermon, story
Tagged angels, cross, Good Friday, hope, Jesus, reserved sacrament
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Palms and Passion: If these were silent
Holy Week sets a high bar for the followers of Christ. It asks whether we are willing to cry louder than the forces of sin and death, or whether we will rely on the stones, the cross, and the carillon to do it for us. Continue reading
Posted in story
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over the water 