And I was stunned, and all this week, as the oil has crept nearer and onto our own state’s shores, my carefully balanced compromise of prayer, anger, cynicism and hopeful dependence on BP, the MMS, Congress and Barak Obama to step up and fix everything has been crumbling under those ten words, the image of a Brown Pelican, a Christ, being crucified so that we might rise up and have life through him.
October 4, 2009 World Wide Communion Sunday Psalm 133; Revelation 21:1-5 My friend Bruce traveled with a clergy group to Israel a few months ago, and told me this story about his group’s visit to the holy city of Sefad, in the hills near the Galilee. Sefad is a city of mysticism and artistic vision; [...]
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/6924883] (vimeo ID: 6924883)
Laurie Ann Kraus Genesis 32:9-15, 22-32; 33:1-11 Self-Validation: Spiritual Antibody #3 For how many of you in this room is your best always good enough? Think about that’¦and listen: It is the final hour of a pastors’ retreat. We have reached a conclusion of baptismal name-calling. Pastors one-by-one are invited to sit in the center [...]
Mark 9:14-37 An Unclenched Moment: Relaxation and Self-Regulation Gentle me, Holy One, Into an unclenched moment, a deep breath, a letting go of heavy experiences, of shriveling anxieties, of dead certainties, that, softened by the silence, surrounded by the light and open to the mystery, I may be found by wholeness, upheld by the unfathomable, [...]
September 13, 2009 Ordinary Time Mark 8:22-38 We had been warned, but we did it anyway: we rented a car in England. I’m a good driver, and I thought I had what I needed. A decent enough map. A clear destination. A companion on the journey—map reader and spotter. After the first two miles of [...]
in the ordinary-day life practice of spiritual values that Riviera members have come to call “reflecting the path of Christ” I am often awed and always grateful for the generosity of our community of faith. This is not a Sunday-only kind of faith community for most of you: in addition to going to work, maintaining [...]
September 6, 2009 Mark 7:24-37 We are the generation that stands between the fires:. . . It is our task to make from fire not an all-consuming blaze but the light in which we see each other fully. All of us different, all of us bearing One Spark. We light these fires to see more [...]
John 6:25-69, selections This is a hard saying, who can stomach it? An Episcopal priest whose writing I enjoy wrote a story once about a class of first graders making their first communion. She described the beautiful white dresses and gloves, the boys in their blue blazers, the parents, proud and tearful as they guided [...]
7/26/09 Ordinary Time 2 Samuel 11:1-15 Hearing this morning’s scripture, you might think you were reading a transcript of some reality tv show, a telenovela, perhaps, rather than listening for the word of God. There’s just nothing uplifting, holy, or, well, biblical about this tale of the sordid fall of Israel’s golden boy, King David, [...]