Tag Archives: Holy Innocents

The Innocents

From behind the page their cries muffled by millennia seep through Where, we ask, is God? There swaddled tight smuggled out into the wilderness What good, we ask, is a God who bleeds when the sword lays open a mother’s … Continue reading

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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

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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

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Bethlehem

In the ancient city, haunted by memories of feast and famine, exile and exodus, the earth itself makes room, Creation shifting and splitting as angels sing Glory out of cold stars shining with old light. Out of the holy darkness, … Continue reading

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Epiphany: we need another way

What I didn’t write in the parish newsletter This Sunday, we celebrate the arrival of the Wise Men at the manger; the completion of many a Christmas tableau. On Christmas Eve, we pondered a moment how the birth of a … Continue reading

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Holy innocents

Their wisdom was not wanted by the powers that be, in case it would unseat their certainty of their own anointed state. Warned in a dream, they went home another way, pursued by rumours of mothers kneeling in the ashes of … Continue reading

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Holy Innocents

The hard historical evidence for the massacre of the innocents of Bethlehem may be sketchy, thank God, yet the meme pervades our culture, from Moses to Jesus; even though we can barely comprehend the idea, we admit it to our … Continue reading

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Year C Advent 3: Rachel refused to be consoled

Here’s Matthew’s gospel, telling what happened not long after Jesus was born: Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in … Continue reading

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Holy Innocents

When they told him the story (and how could they not? They couldn’t keep it from him, have it told to him by someone else, who didn’t understand …); when they told him the story, how did they explain it to … Continue reading

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