A Positively Poetic Priest

The Third Sunday of Advent One of the many museums I have been to in my life is the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas. Before I started my last job in Houston, I spent a week setting up my apartment and trying to get to know the city a little bit. I had plenty of expectations about what moving to Texas was going to be like, but part of that first week, I was trying to figure out if those expectations were correct or not. The Museum district in Houston has plenty of museums to choose from and I wandered in and out of a number of them. In the Contemporary Arts Museum though is where I started to realize that many of my expectations were going to be broken, had to be let go of. In its halls were a dizzying array of abstract art compilations, pieces made out of trash, graffiti type works, and a number of things that I stared at, simply wondering what I was looking at. I’m still not sure I understand all of what I saw that day. We all move through our lives with plenty of...

Second Sunday of Advent Year A Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven has come near! What a promise! What a call! What a loaded statement. Thank you, John the Baptist. Last week in the sermon, I talked about Jesus’ reminder to keep awake. Keeping awake and paying attention to every moment of our lives can be a very hard thing to do. However, the riches to be gained from such a practice are plentiful. By keeping awake, by paying attention to the moments of our lives, we see things we may have never seen before. We see God at work in our lives in new ways, in places we never thought God would venture. We see connections we may have missed before, between other people and ourselves. We see how we imitate our parents, probably way too much, not only in their sayings and gestures, but in the way we handle our emotions. We notice how our own bodies react and respond to what is going on around us and how that affects our daily lives. Our bodies are great at taking overloaded s...

a year, a year! a year in poetry! a year of sorrow and joy of confusion and mission of tenderness and shame a year of naming abstract thoughts that defy and untold emotions streaming forth from the sky a year of speaking to myself a year of writing for my future a year of sharing of my soul a year of listening a year, a year! a year of uncounted voices of perspectives unforetold of lessons I had forgotten and morals I wish were sold a year of changes and changelessness a year of blue hope and hopelessness of quiet words and tearless cries a year of what cannot be said but must, oh must! be shared because at the last its only us we must tell, we must share in poetry, if nothing else! please listen, listen to the secrets under-girding this year, this year

Have you ever been listening to a piece of music, enjoying the melody, flowing along with it... when all of a sudden the melody completely changed? (Play music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moL4MkJ-aLk ) Many would describe the way the melody changes in Sir Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 as sudden. Most people would say that they know the song Pomp and Circumstance, but Sir Elgar actually wrote five different Marches with the same name. The No.1, which we heard, starts with large brass fanfare and a full string melody which includes the musical whip banging in the background before all of a sudden going into the much softer fluid grandeur of the what we all associate with Pomp and Circumstance. Perhaps you could hear the audience's surprise in the form of laughter when the melody suddenly changes. It was an unexpected turn of events.  We as Christians have gotten so used to the idea of waiting for Jesus to come. Every year we wait, spending Advent wai...

"Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."  As we sit here today, we are at a turning point in our year. As we approach the end of our secular calendar year, we also have come to the end of our church calendar year. This is the last Sunday after Pentecost and next week we will celebrate the first Sunday of Advent, which begins a new church year. In our lectionary calendar, we have come to the end of our journey with the gospel of Luke, and so we hear today the climax of Luke's great story, the story of the crucifixion. This may seem like an odd gospel passage to hear on this Sunday, however there is good narrative sense in hearing this story today. Sometimes we may question what the lectionary committee was thinking when they put together the cycle of readings, but as a group of seasoned priests and lay people of the church, we can trust that they had a reason for this choice. In my own study and sitting with this passage this week, I have come to the ...

30 October 2016 Proper 26C What do you see when you look in the mirror?  I read a story once from a busy business woman in New York City, where on her way to work one day, she saw something unexpected. After she had entered her place of employment as usual, she went to catch an elevator up to her office floor. As she was walking up to the bank of elevators, she saw one was filling up and so she started running. Above the elevators was a line of mirrors and as she ran into the elevator, she caught a glimpse of someone she recognized as a friend but couldn’t place at the moment and she raised her hand to wave. After she was on the elevator on her way upstairs, she realized that the friend she had glimpsed in the mirror as she was running for elevator, was in fact herself. Her mind had recognized herself as a friend.  What do we see when we look in the mirror?  One thing I can tell you about living next door is that the Rectory has a lot of mirrors. There is a mirror right a...

23 October 2016 Proper 25C There are a lot of sayings out there about practice, especially in the realm of sports. "Practice, practice, practice." "If you don't practice, you don't deserve to win." "If you think practice is boring, try sitting on the bench." "Don't practice until you get it right, practice until you can't get it wrong." "You play the way you practice." Then there are the longer ones written on gym posters and websites.  "Be patient, the results will speak for themselves." You have heard these kinds of sayings shouted out on sports fields, you have seen these sayings on tee shirts, you have said these things to yourself in the midst of challenges. These are normal parts of daily life, especially for anyone involved in any athletic endeavor. But I've never heard any of these applied to life in the church. Yet, there are many things that we do in the community of the church that re...

2 October 2016  Proper 22C  In 1927, the Belgian Catholic priest Georges Lemaitre proposed a theory about our universe  being always expanding, trying to answer and give reason to some strange observations in  astronomy and physics. Most of us know his theory these days as the big bang theory. In the big  bang theory, a small singularity explodes into a huge and vastly expanding universe.  This image, starting with something so small and creating something vast, is the same image that  Jesus invokes today with the parable of the mustard seed. It is such a good image for us to  understand when it comes to the work of God in this world. God always starts with something  small, something ordinary and turns it into something extraordinary. We are part of the larger  work of art, and yet, each of us is always a masterpiece of astounding value. We all started as  something so small, and from that tiny beginning, against all odds, we have ...

25 September 2016  Proper 21C  Please, stay calm. “Don’t let this story [from the gospel passage this morning] freak us  out about hell and damnation. It is not about the afterlife and its conditions. It is a  parable, a made up fictional story told to make a point, a point on how to live this life  here and now.” (PreachingTip.com)  If you were with us last week, you know that I talked about parables and how they  challenge, humor, and teach us. The parable in the gospel passage this morning  definitely continues that style of teaching. This parable is not as confusing as the one  about the corrupt manager that we heard last week, but “The story is left opened ended  because it points to us. We are opened ended. Remember parables are always about this  life. This story is asking us if we will come around and change our ways.” (PreachingTip.com)  So in what way is this parable asking us if we will change? In order to discern th...

18 September 2016  Proper 21C  There once was a turtle that lived near a hare. The hare made fun of the turtle for going  so slowly all the time. One day, the hare had a marvelous idea. He was going to  challenge the turtle to a race! Then he could really make fun of the turtle for losing.  There was no way the hare with all his speed wouldn't win! When the hare saw the turtle  the next day he challenged the turtle to a race and surprisingly the turtle accepted. They  set the agreed upon start and finish and got themselves ready. At the starting sound, off  they went along the path. The hare bounded ahead and soon became so far ahead he  couldn't even see the turtle behind him anymore. After a little while, he thought to  himself, I am so far ahead, I have time to take a little nap. I'll wake up and still have  plenty of time to finish. So he found a nice spot and sat down for a nap. The turtle  however, had been steadily walki...

11 September 2016  Proper 19C  Have you ever been walking or driving somewhere, but not really paying attention and ended up somewhere else? When I was a kid, my family went to the church multiple  times a week and more than a few times, when my mom's mind was busy and she wasn't paying attention, she would accidentally drive to the church instead of wherever she was  trying to go. Sometimes she would realize it before she got to the church and change  course, but sometimes we would pull into the church parking lot and us, the kids, the back seat drivers would ask, “why are we here?” and my mom would look around and say, “I wasn't paying attention.” We all wander off course sometimes.  Some of us have the wandering off tendency more than others. Sometimes we have good  reasons for wandering off. Sometimes we are looking for other things. Sometimes there  is no good reason, but we feel the need to do so and off we go. Metaphorically, when we  ...

After this weekend, after this summer of pain, I want to share this. Written earlier this summer, but so much so still applicable.  7/8/16 Value you buy yourself a gun a good one and expect to pay a few grand you paid the fee rolled the dice and brought home your death to carry a few grand! for protection ease of mind not too high a price to pay a gun requires ammunition steel plated bullet rounds stacks of magazines and cleaner oh and targets so your aim doesn't drop out of practice and of course the stickers the reputation to build upon your car no one messes with you just a few grand more while clean out your gun one day you hear shots across the corner well versed in explosion patterns you know the range and weapon into the fray you jump excitedly to defend your people (forgetting perhaps we all are people) alas you are hit alas you missed the only one dead the Samaritan barely old enough to be a man yet with ...