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Category Archives: story
Be patient
When our children were small and there were too many things to do with the two hands that I have, one of the children, wise and observant, noticed that often their requests were met with the same, repeated phrase. I realized this one day when they asked me, “for a drink, now please, and not in a minute.”
Be patient, beloved. Continue reading
Underwater Jesus
Today is a heavy travel day here in the US. For many, a trip home brings feelings of relief and deep joy. For others, the air is electric with anxiety and dangers. For some, there is no going home, only the wilderness wandering within sight but not touch of the Promised Land. For not a few, the opening of the holiday season begins a pilgrimage to the abyss of grief. Continue reading
Posted in prayer, story
Tagged grief, Psalm 130:1, submerged statues, Thanksgiving, underwater Jesus
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Race and guns: a call to the occasion “For Such a Time As This” with the Rev. Sharon Risher
I was honoured to offer this opening prayer and call at lunch with God Before Guns and the Rev. Sharon Risher at Forest Hill Presbyterian Church, Cleveland Heights, today. What do guns have to do with any of this? That … Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, prayer, story
Tagged God Before Guns, Mother Emmanuel Church, Rev Sharon Risher
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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
