Category: Speaking to the Soul

I stood in my cardigan and stole behind a small, low altar, clinging obstinately to that other creed, the science that says that outdoor air is more effective at interrupting the spread of a pandemic virus than indoor seating allows as we circulated Word and Sacrament.

“Please come and put your hands on {me} so that {I} will be healed and live.”

“Does this world, as it is now, make us more able to hate than hear? Fight than forgive? Believe liars and those who traffic in false witness rather than the Gospel of Christ?”

“So I have been allowing myself to bring my aggrieved heart to God in age-old questioning that comes straight from the inner kid. “Where are you?” I ask.”

” I wonder – did Jesus go through the terrible twos? If so, how did Mary handle it? Whether he was naturally a good child, taught well by Mary, or representing God authentically, he left us lessons to follow and to apply to our daily lives, showing others the love that God and Jesus wanted us to demonstrate to one another.”

“As children, many of us learned this prayer to our Guardian Angel: ‘Angel of God, my Guardian dear,/To whom God’s love commits me here,/Ever this day be at my side,/ To light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.’”

“Making Jesus our cornerstone as his disciples means literal alignment with the values of the kingdom of God. How do we respond to God’s claims upon our lives? Do we line ourselves up according to God’s values of justice, mercy, and integrity? Do we give our share of the glory to God by working for the betterment of this society that we, in our freedom, have built? Do we seek to make the building and walls stronger?”

“We are witnesses to that ending, sometimes gentle, sometimes violent, to trees and to those whom we love and admire, and to those we never knew but who affected our lives in some way, be they Supreme Court Justices or the great-grandmother who wrestled with death from COVID-19. We see the exterior strength. We mourn the weakening at the core.”

“Stay here, mama.” 
I flick the switch bringing darkness into the room. “I love you. I’m not going anywhere.” 

“We forget to watch Peter. How many times have we preached, written, taught, and heard about bumbling Peter? But Peter is Everyman. He is us. Every foible, every blind spot, every dumb question. He is us. Perhaps the greatest miracle is that the four Gospels (plus Luke, Volume II, aka Acts) lay out lesson after lesson about Peter. We are given the guidebook to discernment, growth, sin, repentance, and forgiveness, all bound up in Peter. Bumbling, stupid Peter. “Feed my sheep.” Of course, we look to Jesus, our Saviour, the one whom we work so hard to pattern our lives on, and so we miss Peter.”