All rights reserved
© Rosalind C Hughes and over the water, 2011-2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Rosalind C Hughes and over the water, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
A Family Like Mine: Biblical Stories of Love, Loss, and Longing
https://bookstore.upperroom.org/Products/1921/a-family-like-mine.aspxWhom Shall I Fear: Urgent Questions for Christians in an Age of Violence
https://www.amazon.com/Whom-Shall-Fear-Questions-Christians/dp/0835819671-
Recent Posts
Archives
Categories
RevGalBlogPals
Meta
Tag Archives: gun violence
Pentecost: fear and tailfeathers
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14:27) “I do not … Continue reading
Posted in current events, holy days, sermon
Tagged baptism, gun violence, Holy Spirit, Jeremiah 6:14, John 14, LGBTQ, mass shootings, Ohio, Pentecost
Leave a comment
Do not leave us comfortless
“Do not leave us comfortless.” What if our prayer was not for ourselves, for our own comfort, but that we might not be without comfort to offer to those who are beyond consolation? Continue reading
He descended into hell
He ascended into heaven,and sitteth at the right hand of God … Thence shall he cometo judge the quick and the dead,he who sitteth at the righthand of God who sees the sparrowin flight and will not leta feather fall … Continue reading
Posted in current events, holy days, poetry, prayer, Whom Shall I Fear?
Tagged Ascension, gun violence, Hosea 11:3-4, Matthew 10:29, school shooting, The Apostles Creed, Uvalde
Leave a comment
Holy Innocents: transferred
There must have been others who retracedtheir ancestors’ footprints over Sinai,although no Moses basket launched upon the Nile;instead, the Innocents wakened from a nightmareby the whisper of a blade, the fadingmemory of mothers’ final, ululating lullaby… Innocence today plays with … Continue reading
Holy Innocents: a pieta
The stoles are cobbled together from whatever orange fabric I can lay my hands on in any given season; the constant that binds them together as a family – except for the orange colour – is the children’s handprint pattern that finishes each one off at the ends… Continue reading
Posted in gun violence, holy days, story
Tagged #WearOrange, gun violence, Holy Innocents, Jesus, orange stoles
Leave a comment
Suffer the little children
Rumours of rumours; and the rub is that in this country, in this time, we cannot dismiss them until the day is done and the sun has set over the farthest gate. It should not be this way. Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence
Tagged gun violence, Isaiah 11:6, school shooting, TikTok challenge
Leave a comment
It’s (not too) complicated
It means beating swords into ploughshares, guns into shovels, removing them from the hands and the lives and the deaths of our children. There is no deeper shadow cast than the deaths of children, and the enormity of the problem before us is our mountain to climb. Continue reading
Posted in advent meditations, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Advent 2, gun violence, mustard seed faith, prophets
Leave a comment
A sustaining hope
The interventions of God, strength for the journey, can come from humans sweating over laboratory test tubes as easily and as often as angels baking on hot stones. Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged 1 Kings 19, Bread of Life, COVID-19, Elijah, gun violence, Jesus, John 6:35
Leave a comment
Do not invite death
We are not made in anyone’s image but God’s. We are not made for the corruption of death but for the covenant of life. Jesus does not love death or bloodshed – but Jesus loves us. Knowing this, how can we not consider turning from death to life; to pour out healing without counting the cost; to withhold death and restore relationship wherever it is possible; to deny the devil’s envy and replace it with love? Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged death, death penalty, gun violence, Jesus, life, Mark 5:21-43, Wisdom of Solomon
Leave a comment
Trinity Sunday: we who are many are one
It is the mutuality of the Trinity that we seek. We hear its echoes in our prayers: “though we are many, we are one body” (Romans 12:5). We come closest to it when we experience compassion. Continue reading
Posted in current events, holy days, sermon
Tagged Amos 5:8, COVID, crossroads, gun violence, John 12:32, John 3:17, John Donne, racism, Romans 12:5, Trinity Sunday
Leave a comment
over the water 