*any resemblances this parable may bear to true life experience are entirely purposeful.
the parable of the pregnant young woman
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good shepherd sunday
Ours is not a God who leads in paths of plushness. When faced with the cross, our God climbed up on it. When threatened with death, our God said, “do your worst.” We follow a Shepherd who leads us through the valley of the shadow of death.
the tenderness of Lent
When I was confirmed and began formal discernment for holy orders, I was fortunate to be under the priestly care of Mtr. Rhonda Mawhood Lee, who writes beautifully about Lent disciplines today over on Faith & Leadership:
These friends are relieved when I tell them that self-examination, repentance, fasting and self-denial are challenging Lenten disciplines for me, too. That’s not because I’m particularly sinful, self-indulgent or lazy, although I can be all those things simultaneously. It’s because people who struggle with depression, and their children, can engage in self-examination in ways that are the opposite of what the church intends. Instead of looking honestly at ourselves and asking God to forgive and heal us, we may become trapped in self-loathing, unable to imagine a path toward holy growth. For too many, like my mother, depression is a fatal disease. The warped self-denial it engenders leads them, not to seek richer relationships with God and neighbors, but to reject life itself as they find its daily pain too much to bear.
Read the rest HERE.
to my loved ones
for all friends, acquaintances, and family (gathered from Minnesota and Ohio, Canada and the UK, New York to Texas to Georgia and Washington, and so many places in between):
I am feeling so very blessed to have been loved by so many beautiful, faithful, goofy people for all of my 30 years. I very much wish I could stick pericopes here, but I know I’d forget a dozen important ones and I wish least of all for any ill feelings; those who have fallen in love with me, who have been on sports teams and drama casts with me, who have sat on the couch and have traveled and have drunk and made dinner and walked and learned with me–I am so, so very grateful to have met you and shared life with you. Continue reading
Who Do You Say That I Am?
Sermon preached at DOWNTOWN CHURCH on 17 January, 2016; Eve of the Feast of the Confession of St. Peter; reading from Matthew 16:13-19
There’s this two-year-old I know who has life all figured out. Continue reading
hope of things not seen 