Seeking sanctuary

Posted on January 11, 2017 by Rosalind C Hughes

Last week, the office set of church keys went missing. We tried hard to discover them, but after a decent interval of searching and waiting for a miraculous appearance, I gave in and called the food pantry guest who had visited us that morning.

“Oh, those are your keys?” He had them. On a fob with the church name and phone number.

He didn’t have enough gas to bring them back, he said, so I met him on the way home from evening service at a MacDonald’s just off the freeway, in a near-eastern neighbourhood of Cleveland.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” my office administrator, the church treasurer, and the sexton had all asked me.

“It’s MacDonald’s,” I told them, ignoring the sound of heists, hijacks, and gunplay riffling through the card index of my memory (I am old enough that it has not been digitized).

Besides, there was a part of me that balked at the question. This is a neighbourhood where people live, and work (some at MacDonald’s), raise their children, and worship. Who am I to say that it’s good enough for them, but not for the likes of me?

And if we’re honest, mightn’t it be more dangerous, less safe in some ways, for him to sit in his friend’s broken-down truck, waiting for me in my suburban church parking lot?

Safety has been on my mind lately. Either side of the missing key mystery, I participated in conversations where churches were described as “safe spaces” in a time of division, danger, and disgruntlement. I was the culprit first time around. Still, when I heard the phrase spoken aloud, I felt myself balk again. What’s safe for me may not be so easy for another.

A few days after our recent election, a man stopped me in our church parking lot as I left, last and alone, from a funeral. He was delighted and excited to tell me that now, all of “the immigrants” would be sent “home.”

I hadn’t realized until I told the story today how rattled I still was by the encounter.

What gave me pause was not concern for my own residential status (the anniversary of my citizenship falls on Inauguration Day…); but the next morning, from the pulpit, I counted us. One from Colombia. Two from Vietnam. Liberia, Nigeria. The realization that for some of us, such encounters are too regular for safety – that is what scared me, and scarred me.

Safety is not a static situation, nor a one-size-fits-all solution. Perhaps it is not even, after all, the destiny or destination of the church. (Standing behind Jesus was not always the safest place to be, for a given definition of safety.)

Perhaps we are called to something a little loftier; a little bolder; even more humble. Something more inclusive. Something more surprising. Something a little less… safe?

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Epiphany

Posted on January 8, 2017 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio, January 2017

Outside of the main city, down through the wilderness, is the lost city of Petra. The intricately carved rock edifices bound deep valleys and lead for miles. Once a bustling hub of economic activity, the city fell silent as trade routes moved and migrated away. Now, archaeologists work to excavate temples, tombs, homes from under the red sand.

Climbing out of the valley, we reached high points, each peak claiming to have the best view in Petra, or the best view in Jordan, or the best view in the Middle East.

It was here at the top of the world, found and lost and found again, that I encountered the silence. For a few seconds, suspended between earth and heaven, time and eternity; I realized how unsilent our world has become, when I found myself finally with no electric hum, no background traffic, only the empty air and a beating heart.view-4

And it was there, at the peak of nowhere, that I noticed the side of a shelter, a booth constructed for the comfort and refreshment of passing tourists like me. I saw that it had for its siding a piece of heavy vinyl case wrapping, imprinted with the legend: UNHCR Refugee Relief.

Even into that warm silence, a shiver sounded the echoes of war, and the history of a people riven and driven from place to place, displaced by war and tyranny.

And into the midst of this history, halfway from Abraham to us, breaks the story of Jesus, born into the scandal of a holy city desecrated by the power of a proud humanity; a temple of peace perverted by the pride of kings and cult of emperors.

On a silent night, God breathes into a history of human hubris and violence. On a holy night, God brings kings to their knees and makes the heavens gasp out loud with the simplest act of love.

It was not a political coup. Herod need not have been so afraid, nor become so murderous – his fear of losing status, losing what little power the Romans allowed him led him to horrors beyond our imagining, although we still see them on our news screens today. Pilate would come to make a similar error, confusing loyalty to Caesar with faithfulness, confusing convenience with justice, and suppression of critical speech with keeping the peace.

Yet this was not a political coup. Jesus would instead grow up to work in the ordinary lives of ordinary people: healing, leading, proclaiming good news to the poor, raising the dead. He blessed the meek, the peacemakers, the persecuted.

The season of Epiphany begins with a visit from the wise men, who followed a star, a sign in the heavens, to find the baby born King of the Jews. It ends with the mountaintop, the revelation of Jesus as the Word of God, flanked by Moses and Elijah, lit up from within and from without with the very Light of God. petraunhcr-1And Peter will ask to build booths there, using whatever comes to hand; the debris of human sin and violence, and the remnants of repentance and the attempt at restoration: wrappings of refugee relief humanitarian aid packages.

The story of Jesus, in the manger, on the mountaintop, takes place in real time, in real places, touching real lives. It is not outside of history, but it echoes within it.

These men who came to visit the holy family in Bethlehem, they are described as wise. They are wise because they follow the signs that God has placed in front of them. They are obedient to God’s call. They are wise because they offer worship to Jesus, the Son of God, placing before him the best that they have to offer, even if his needs seems humble. They do not hold back, nor place their pride before his humility. They are wise because they avoid the machinations of Herod, refuse to play into his political games. They go home by another way.

There is trouble here. Herod is about to commit atrocities. Children will die, and families will suffer. But the wise men turn away. In doing so, in skirting the city and slipping through the intelligence nets, they buy time for the family of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus to flee to Egypt. They may even have saved this family’s life, these wise men.

In the face of the grief that is soon to befall Bethlehem, it hardly seems enough; but I think of those others, who hid a family from the Nazis, even though they couldn’t stop the Holocaust; or airlifted a child out of the reach of the napalm bombs, even though they could not yet stop the war. One who drove an ambulance in wartime, to offer what solace and service they could, even though they could not save everyone.

The world is not ours to save. The wise men knew that their role, their call was to follow God, obediently and with curiosity and courage. They knew that they were to worship only Jesus. They knew that they were not to succumb to the political machinations of Herod and his ilk. They knew that, even if they could only save one family, that is not the same as hopelessness, or helplessness, for that one family was important. That humble child was necessary. That little life was worth saving.

Their wisdom was in doing what they could, whatever they could, file_000-2and it was no small thing, to journey so far and to defy the king and to offer homage to a child. Their wisdom was in doing what they could, and returning home quietly, trusting God to take up the story from there.

And that remains our call. To recognize the call of Christ, and to obey it with curiosity and
courage. To worship with the wise, kneeling before a God who stoops to meet us. We practice homage, offering our gifts to the lowly and the holy. We are not afraid to consult with kings, nor even to proclaim the gospel before them; but when we are blocked by powers and principalities, we find another way home. We find another way home, following the pole star of Christ’s love made manifest in the world.

We cannot escape our history, our time and our place within it. Even in the high places and the lonely places, the signs follow us, siding built out of refugee wrapping. Yet we do not, either, escape God: the silence of a holy night, an act of love breathed into the world, breaking open history, politics, geography; filling them with the grace of a child born for us and for our salvation: Jesus, Emmanuel, God is with us.

Amen

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Magi

Posted on January 6, 2017 by Rosalind C Hughes

Stargazers, seeking signs
in the old, cold light of the heavens;
startled to find God’s grace reflected
instead by the bright tears of a child,
if only they will stoop so low
to pay him homage.


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The Holy Name

Posted on January 1, 2017 by Rosalind C Hughes

The Feast of the Holy Name, January 1, 2017

In the very name of Jesus is our prayer. The name, which was not chosen by his parents but given to them as a sign when his birth was announced by the angels; his name means, “God helps,” or “God saves.” When we invoke the name of Jesus, we are already praying, “God help us. God save us.”

On the eighth day, his parents took him to the temple, to participate in the rituals of their religion, circumcising him and naming him before God. The timing is significant: the eighth day, the day that follows a full week of creation, signifies a new creation; a new beginning; a new covenant in the body; a new name. God help us.

So while New Year’s Day is not exactly a religious holiday, the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus is, and it does remind us, falling as it does on New Year’s Day, of the holiness of time, and of the ritual significance of new beginnings.

There is a reason we run to rituals, to mark beginnings, endings, and intentions. It is not a silly thing to set a New Year’s resolution. It is not an insignificant undertaking, to commit to a ritual of prayer, or of healthy living, of the betterment of our relationships or of our world.

Rituals help to hold us accountable. When we say that every time we come to this table, we will remember the life and death, the resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, God help us, then that very ritual helps us to remember. The rhythm of the week of creation, and its Sabbath, and its new Sunday sanctifies our days, and helps to keep us aimed towards God, and towards the sacraments of God’s presence with us.

Part of the discipline of making a pledge to the church is that naming of intentions. If we plan to tithe, then marking that tithe out, naming it and dedicating it, will help us to keep our intentions. We don’t have to release our tax returns to one another; but naming our intentions helps us to keep them.

When we name aloud our intentions, what we will remember to do, to be, to say; then we hold ourselves accountable, and invite others to help us.

God help us, we walk with one another. We do not baptize ourselves, or celebrate alone. We do not need to carry the burdens of grief without one another. Rituals bring us together, to share the load. Jesus told his disciples, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Jesus, whose very name is a prayer: God help us. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

The rituals of sharing, of bearing one another’s burdens, help to relieve the weight of the world upon our shoulders.

For the last twenty-five years of her life, my mother wore a locket. She had a lot of health problems – it is a testament to the curiosity of doctors that she wore the locket for so long. The doctors told her that she needed to wear an SOS bracelet; but in those days, these were plastic things like hospital ID tags, and she would literally rather die than wear such a thing every day. So my father took her shopping, and they found a locket, a big silver flapper’s compact from the 1920s, and they had it engraved, SOS. It held her emergency information, prescriptions, and pills. She wore it every day for the rest of her life.

When she died, I polished out the SOS, but the locket still held its ritual significance. It was a sign; it was a plea for help; it was a lifesaver. So I turned it into a prayer: it now holds a coiled paper with the ancient prayer, “God be in my head, and in my understanding …”

God save us; God help us.

The shared rituals of prayer, of the daily office, remembering that it is our role to pray in the morning, and at night; the rhythms of shared ritual help to keep us on track to keep our resolutions to walk with God. There are even apps and podcasts to help us keep the appointment. (I use this one.)

Rituals express the inexpressible. The bread and the wine, such ordinary things, tell us an extraordinary story, of the love of God, the incarnation of Jesus, God help us, God save us. They tell us the story of life poured out for the sake of our eternal lives; of love poured out for the sake of our salvation, our comfort, our joy.

The ritual of naming Jesus in the temple, such a simple, everyday act, expressed something beyond the imagination even of his parents, even of Simeon and Anna. The name of Jesus: God save us, God help us; it was a prayer that had already been answered. It remains our prayer.

Amen.

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Unmoved

Posted on December 31, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

It is not my place to regret
the turning of the earth
upon its axis, nor to mourn
the passing of the year,
the starlight winked and blinked
across the empty spaces,
fallen, finally, at our feet,
and gone.
It is not for me to grieve
that which is undone,
nor that which cannot be
undone, while
the world hurries heedless
past the sun.

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Christmas Eve

Posted on December 24, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

A message for and from the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio

There’s something strange about the sign that the shepherds outside Bethlehem received that Christmas night so long ago. After all, if a choir of angels appears above the hillside, lighting up the night sky and singing of God’s glory, the most likely explanations are that you’ve been sampling the sheep dip, or that God is up to something. The shepherds received a fairly clear and unambiguous sign, you might think, that something unusual was afoot. And yet, the angels tell another story. “This shall be the sign,” they say. There will be a child, a newborn baby in the city, lying in a manger for a crib.

A child is born. As signs go, it is one that could be said to blend in a little as ordinary life goes by. How many babies are born in the city at night, wrapped and swaddled with love, laid down to sleep? Even the manger isn’t that unusual. How many parents are unprepared, or under-resourced, or out of luck? In my grandmother’s day, the child would have been laid in a dresser drawer, the indoors, upstairs equivalent of a manger. It happened all the time. The sign is not as unusual, as spectacular, as we make it out to be, with our costuming and our carols. It would have gone unnoticed to so many of the people of the city: God arriving in plain sight, and in the most open of secrets.

While the angels cannot help but bear witness, because something so special is happening that night, in that barn in the city of Bethlehem, in that baby; still, the sign is not after all that God has broken the sky, filling with world with ungodly fear. It is rather that God has entered the world in the most humble and the most human way possible: being born of a woman, as were we all.

Nothing in the world is completely ordinary. All of it is the creation and fulfilment of God’s purpose, even this. And to make an infant the sign of God’s presence among us was a stroke of genius.

They convict us, these small creatures, of our sinfulness. They call out our pride, spitting up without regard for the status of the person singled out for such an honour. They call out our greed, demanding that we share our time, our bodies, our hair and glasses and keys. They call out our selfishness, the inward-looking self-preservation that is split open by a picture of a child washed up on a beach, or sitting smeared in the back of an ambulance. Peace on earth; goodwill to all people? The children call for our repentance, for us to do better, for their sake, for Christ’s sake.

And yet, babies do not judge us. They offer chance after chance for us to do better, to love harder, to grow into the image of God. They are the most merciful human beings.

The sign of God’s love for us is love made manifest. The song of God’s glory is the soft lullaby of a weary, happy woman; and the sigh of relief of a man who didn’t know he was holding his breath. The sign of God’s presence among us is more mundane than we expect, because the open secret is that God is always with us; that God has always loved us; that God doesn’t need to break the sky to reach us or light up the night in order to tell us that God is always with us: Emmanuel. God is with us, demanding our repentance, our best efforts to do better, love harder, forgive more freely. God is with us, loving us into new life, promising peace at the last, offering infinite opportunities for love to glory over its alternatives.

May the signs and sounds of God’s presence surround you and those whom you love this Christmastide. May they soothe your sorrows, lift you up with laughter, and may flights of angels sing you to your rest. Amen.

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Married to the miracle

Posted on December 18, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent in Year A. Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25

So this is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: his mother, Mary, engaged but not married, was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

It would appear, to inquiring minds, that there is a whole lot of background missing from this bold and forward statement: “was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.”

On the face of it, it’s a simple statement of the facts. Mary found herself pregnant; the author of the child was the Holy Spirit. But we have inquiring minds. We want to know more. We are inclined to press for details.

When my children were very small, and they began asking where children came from, the first task of their parent was to ascertain what sort of information they were looking for. Was it scientific information: biology, genetics, mechanics? Or was it social information? Had they encountered a pattern of family life that had set them to wondering about how one brought a new family into being? Was it, even, theological? They were told from a young age that they were children of God.

We had some very interesting conversations, which I will not repeat from the pulpit in order to save the blushes of everyone concerned, but children really do get to the heart of the matter when there’s something they really want to know. Most of our conversations, in the end, got to the point at which a weary mother, stretched to the limits of her knowledge of science, metaphysics, and tact would say, “And that’s when the miracle happens.”

The miracle. Because what else is the creation of a whole new human being, body and soul, out of the genetic material of its ancestors? Made in the image of God, indeed.

The Gospel according to Matthew traces Jesus’ bloodline in the flesh back to King David. This is necessary in order to legitimate the claim that he is the long-awaited Messiah. Matthew traces this genealogy through Joseph. So in one very real and earthly fashion, Matthew affirms Joseph’s paternity. On the other hand, Matthew assures his readers that Mary and Joseph had yet to become man and wife in the fullest sense; so that Joseph had reason to doubt his paternity of this new wrinkle on Mary’s brow, such that it needed to be explained to him by a dream, by an angel, that this was an act of God.

So there is an extent to which, I think, if you put the evangelist Matthew in front of an inquiry panel, and pressed him for the details behind that bald, bold statement: “She was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit;” there would come a point when he would be forced to say, under oath, “That’s where the miracle happens.” This was an act of God. Some things still can bear a little mystery.

His earliest followers did not seem to be particularly hung up on Jesus’ human or divine origins. They were more focused on his life, death, and resurrection. They were more interested in the way in which he brought God to life for them; brought God down to earth for them; raised their view to the heavens. They saw a vision of a new kingdom, one in which God’s plans for humanity have been brought to fruition; in which the labour has given birth to deep joy; profound justice; mutual mercy; glorious humility. They did not, I think, expect that the labour would be so long; that we today would still be witnesses to war, to the slaughter of innocents, and the perversions of power.

And so what are we to do? Paul writes to the Romans, “you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.” We are called to belong to Jesus Christ. We are not called to explain the inexplicable or to get hung up on the unravelling of that which rightly remains mysterious. Rather, we are called to marry the miracle, to labour with Mary, with God to deliver the kingdom promised from of old, in which the lion will lie down with the lamb, and the Spirit of God will be known across the earth. We are called to belong to Christ.

We who feel helpless at the enormity of the task of peace, the needs of the children; we are called to belong to Christ. We may start by going beyond the quiet dismissal of others and instead asking them to tell us their stories. Instead of labelling those of another religion, those of another belief, we might inquire about their experience of the Holy Spirit. Instead of turning aside from those we do not understand, we might ask them to teach us their language. We may begin by demanding, wherever the opportunity arises, that compassion overturn convention, that mercy is the hallmark stamp of those who belong to Christ.

Do not be afraid to speak peace in a world that shouts of its power. Do not be afraid to whisper mercy in a world that seeks revenge on itself. Do not be afraid of acts of love, nor acts of God – mysterious and miraculous in their results, unconditional and unconventional in their reach.

Joseph listened to the God of his dreams; he listened to the dream of God. “Do not be afraid,” said the angel. Do not be afraid to be part of the miracle, embrace the mystery, go further than you thought was possible into the heart of God. Do not be afraid to belong to Christ.

It could have been otherwise. Joseph could quietly have dismissed Mary. Who knows where she would have ended up, with her baby in tow. No one would have blamed him for doing the right thing. No one would have looked twice at her again. Instead, he embraced the mystery, he married the miracle.

Mary and Joseph found their lives taken over by the Christ child. Babies will do that to you – take over your life. From the moment that each of them said “yes” to the Incarnation of God, their lives were no longer their own alone; they belonged to Christ.

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Do not be afraid of the dark

Posted on December 14, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

An Advent devotion for the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio. Today is the commemoration of St John of the Cross; Juan de la Cruz

Juan de la Cruz is best known to us for his luminous phrase, “the dark night of the soul.” But Juan was not afraid of the dark.

I imagine that the nights were pretty dark where Juan grew up, near Avila in sixteenth-century Spain. He learned to find his way through rigorous discipline, and austere devotion. In the dark, it is easier to stay safe and uninjured if everything else stays in its place and out of your way.

When it is truly dark, they say, the mind begins to see things differently; it finds its own light, its own sight. Juan saw visions.

He describes, in his spiritual poems, the secret journey of the soul on a darkened staircase, sneaking out to meet the beloved, his God,

In the joy of night,
in secret so none saw me,
no object in my sight,
no other light to guide me,
but what burned here inside me.[1]

“No other light to guide me, but what burned here inside me.”

In the beginning, God declared, “Let there be light,” where previously there was only darkness. So we, made in God’s image, need not be afraid of darkness which was part of our being before the world began; it does not hide God, but announces God’s imminence, God’s immanence; the urgent announcement of the advent of light within.

[1] “Song of the Soul that Delights in Reaching the Supreme State,” Juan de la Cruz, translated by A.S. Kline, http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Spanish/StJohnoftheCross.htm#_Toc200278188

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Of prophets and (im)patience

Posted on December 11, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for a snowy third Sunday of Advent in Euclid, Ohio. Isaiah 35:1-10, James 5:7-10, Matthew 11:2-11,  Canticle 15 (the Song of Mary)

Isaiah the prophet wrote the better part of three thousand years ago, maybe in the eighth century BCE, “Here is your God. … He will come and save you.”

And the haunt of jackals shall become a lively swamp, and the tongue of the speechless shall sing for joy.

Mary’s song reclaims the prophetic vision, raising her voice in heartfelt expectation and exultation of God’s justice: God has filled the hungry with good things; God has remembered the promise of mercy. “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my saviour,” sings Mary, while Jesus and John are still being formed in the secrecy of their mothers’ wombs.

And now, John asks, is it true? Is it soon? James answers, “Be patient; do not grumble; strengthen your heart.”

Be patient. For three thousand years and counting (but who’s counting?), we have waited on the promise of the prophets, while the jackals still haunt the edges of our lives, cancer preys on those whom we love; death comes too soon to too many; addiction like a mirage in the desert leads us astray to the haunts of the jackals and mortal danger. We wait, three thousand years later, for the promise of mercy to be remembered, while sin still rages around us and, if we are honest, within us, dividing us from one another, and from God.

But, “Be patient,” advises James.

Right.

When John’s disciples came to Jesus and asked him if it’s true, if the promises hold true, if they are truly to be fulfilled in him, in Jesus of Nazareth, this unlikely, itinerant, unconventional rabbi, with his ragtag band of followers and his cavalier attitude to the ascetic disciplines of camel hair and honeyed locusts: when John’s disciples ask him, Jesus doesn’t tell them to be patient. He doesn’t advise them at all. He describes to them. He tells them what he is doing. In direct fulfillment of the prophets’ promises, he tells them that he has healed the sick, opened the eyes of those who were blind, raised the dead, brought good news to the poor. He is, he says doing everything that was promised. And blessed are they who do not take offence at him for it.

Then, Jesus tells them about John, the prophet who prepared the way.

For three thousand years, the prophets have promised God’s mercy, but they have receive little mercy from those to whom they preached. Now, John was imprisoned in a small cave on the side of the hill, on top of which was built the fortress palace of King Herod. In the night, he would have heard them carousing, the girls dancing, and he must have wondered if wickedness had won, after all. It was ever thus, the burden of the prophet, to know, to see the promise of God, the mercy of God’s loving-kindness; and to witness its frustration by the power of sin, greed, and misplaced authority.

John didn’t live to see that frustration played out on the cross. I have no doubt, though, that he was made thoroughly aware of the resurrection.

Alone in his prison cave, John was wondering, and worrying, whether he had done enough; and whether he had done it right; and whether it was all worth it. Jesus, rather than comforting or cajoling him to be patient, told him, this is who we are. This is what we have done, and what we are doing. It is enough. There will be more.

“Among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” Tell them what you have seen, Jesus says, but wait: there’s more!

For John, his very birth was a miracle, announced by an angel. His life was touched by God from its beginnings, and he knew the Word of God, and the mercy of God. He baptized countless crowds who came to him at the River Jordan, for forgiveness of their sins. He baptized Jesus. “No one has arisen greater than John the Baptist.”

And yet there was more to come. John prepared the way for Jesus, for the incarnation of God’s mercy, the body and soul of God’s love for us.

Two thousand years later, we sometimes find ourselves asking, “Are we to wait for another?” And Jesus answers us, “Go and tell what you see. Tell of the miracles that were unthought of by John. That you have developed technologies capable of filling the hungry with good things. That you have found new and miraculous ways to cure the sick, give sight to the blind. Sometimes, it seems, you can even raise the dead.” I am not the only one here who has flatlined on an operating theatre table. Raising the dead? There are people who do it in our sleep!

We have reached further into the heavens than John – that John – dreamed possible. We have witnessed countless miracles of birth, of mercy, of love. Three thousand years since the prophet Isaiah’s promises, and God still bears with us, still promises mercy, still shares God’s love with us.

There is no one else to wait for. Jesus is here, with us. We witness to his frustration, his death on the cross, every time we fall into the swamp of sin, the haunt of jackals; but we witness also to his resurrection, his ascension, every time we remember him, in the everyday miracles we share with one another, in the water, the wine, the bread.

Two thousand years later, with Herod’s fortress palace and John’s prison in ruins, a fallen down hilltop, we await Christ’s coming in glory; in the meantime, Jesus reminds us, tell what you see. That God’s mercy endures, wherever the promises of the prophets are kept: to do justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly with God.

Strengthen your hearts, then, to do the work that Christ has given us to do. It is enough for today. Still we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.”

Photo: the ruined hilltop fortress palace where John was imprisoned and beheaded by Herod

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Shoulder season

Posted on December 7, 2016 by Rosalind C Hughes

The Spirit keeps reaching,
gripping my shoulders, telling
me to sit, stay a while.
Over my shoulder, promising,
promising soon, soon,
surging on to one more thing,
I feel the snag of her fingers
between my bones, aching from
raking leaves, wrestling sleep.
I am afraid that I will turn back
to find her before me, square
shouldered, crossed arms,
feet planted firmly as
a brick wall; or that after all she
will finally let me go.

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