A Christmas Eve Homily Of all the carols and hymns in the Christmas repertoire, I think the one that best captures the sentiment of this particular year is “In the Bleak Midwinter,” in which the frosty wind made moan and earth stood hard as iron. The earth is hard, in the cold days in the … read
There are days when I think that stories are all that we have. I wonder what stories we will tell when this pandemic is over—stories a year from now or stories a decade from now. We don’t always remember the facts, and we don’t always get all the details right, but the stories we tell … read
What are you afraid of? What do you dream of doing? Let’s let those two questions sit for a while; I promise I’ll come back to them. These parables at the end of Matthew should give the community of faith pause. They are not for the faint-hearted, those who think of the end times in … read
When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, you might have seen this phrase posted in the media somewhere: “May her memory be for blessing.” She was Jewish, of course, and Jewish tradition doesn’t focus very much on what happens after we die. So we say, “May this person’s memory be for blessing.” People also … read
What does it mean to love God? I was not very far into my study of this text when I hit that question. What does it mean to love God? How can we love God, the infinite mystery, the source of all that is? I understand, more or less, what it means to love my … read
Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it … read