Waking Up

“Light that never fades, dispel the mists about us, awaken our faith from sleep.”
This line from the Morning Prayer intercessions hit home. It’s a grey, windy day. We had rain all day yesterday. I’ve been fighting a cold since before Thanksgiving and my energy is sapped. It’s been good to light the candle on the [...]

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The Liturgical Year Draws to a Close

This year November has five Thursdays, which gives us the luxury of ten days between Thanksgiving and the First Sunday of Advent. I’ve always had a particular resonance with the season of Advent, and I feel a bit cheated when it begins in the midst of the busy weekend after Thanksgiving. While I mostly abstain [...]

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Grounded in Grace

In a touching scene in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s well-loved children’s novel The Secret Garden, the fiery tempered young orphan Mary Lennox begins to win the heart of grief-stricken Mr. Archibald Craven with her simple request for “a bit of earth” for a garden. In the course of bringing the long-neglected [...]

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Where Your Treasure Is….

The Gospel readings this month spend a great deal of time talking about how we spend our money. In today’s passage, Jesus tells his listeners, “Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out.” And certainly in our culture, worth is inevitably determined in economic terms. We can get a pretty good idea about [...]

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Reminders

Patricia Livingston is one of my favorite authors and speakers on the topic of everyday spirituality. She often begins her talks by saying that she’s going to remind her listeners of things they already know in their hearts from the experiences of their daily lives. I thought of Pat when I was listening to the [...]

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Happy Earth Day!

It’s a lovely day to celebrate Earth Day. The birds are in full chorus outside my windows (open at last after all the cold and rain we’ve been having) and the rooster was awake around 4 this morning. I live as close to the natural world as I can in the middle of a big [...]

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It’s not about self-esteem

A woman active at a parish I once belonged to complained at a liturgy committee meeting that she was offended at having to pray, “O Lord, I am not worthy to receive you.” This was in the 1980s, when issues of self-esteem were just getting to be hot topics in the therapy and self-help worlds
We [...]

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Why are you searching?

The feasts after Christmas, like Christmas itself, are not a dramatization of Jesus’ life from the time he was born until he began to preach. Even in the infancy narratives, the evangelists were trying to understand the Easter experience. In the story of the boy Jesus lost in the temple, Luke is not simply showing [...]

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