A Positively Poetic Priest

Beloved 4/13/17 (Maundy Thursday) we who say we would do anything for each other given unity in marriage how often do we think to do the least the least of these is washing feet as evidenced by the Savior struck with abundance he gave away all the love of eternity he died, he rose, he washes still our dirty hearts of sorrow woe stuck with grime, with sin, with silt poured upon us in the tears of others

Palm Sunday After another week with another school shooting, I sit here listening to the Passion story with a heavy heart. Why must we feel the need to act out on our fear and anger by killing other people? Hasn't the human race grown out of this behavior yet? Alas, we have not. The senseless violence of the Passion story is all too evident. Even Pilate asks, Why crucify him? What evil has he done? Jesus indeed had not committed any evil. He stood for peace, for relationship with God for caring about the poor and oppressed he stood for love and grace and mercy. And we gave him no mercy. In our human fear and anger we sentenced to death a man who wanted to teach us a new way of living, which scary and vulnerable as it is, is also one of peace, justice, and eternal life. Palm Sunday is a day of tension in the Christian life and story. Traditionally, we start this day with the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and the...

9/5/08 It is a long table The banquet table meant for all Like the path less traveled The pure distance cannot be measured It stretches into infinity Depending on your place and vision As in the plain regions The table stretches off for miles Letting people see each other See the differences and similarities See the unbounded nature Of human population But as those in the mountains know Sometimes hills obscure the view Leaving infinity to the sky And imagination to the earth Showing only those who you really know Or at least imagine so But as the classic author writes You can only really know Your own story The chair that is placed for you Cannot be occupied by me For as you know the place before you I know the place laid for me For here, the cup is not a chalice Nor is it white, black or gold The plate is painted lovingly And the bowl is chipped But your plate might be stone And your cup jade The magnitude of choices...

Q. What is the Christian hope? A. The Christian hope is to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life, and to await the coming of Christ in glory, and the completion of God's purpose for the world.  (The Catechism, BCP 861) Hope is one of those four letter words which we aren't always sure really mean something. We hope for so many things in our lives, but that certainly doesn't mean those things happen. Hope can seem so wishy washy. A dream, a wish, a hope. However, C. R. Snyder, a psychologist and researcher, spent time researching hope and found out that hope really is an important aspect of human life. Even better, hope is less of an emotion or desire and more of a goal. Hope can be learned, and when we learn hope we figure out where we want to go, we determine how to get there, and we believe in ourselves. Hope is the combination of goals, determination, and belief in ourselves. Hope is something we can share with others, when we work with others in ach...

3/16/18 Luke 17:31-33 "On that day, anyone on the housetop who has belongings in the house must not come down to take them away; and likewise anyone in the field must not turn back. Remember Lot's wife. Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it." What Jesus has to say isn't always easy to listen to. Our survival instincts want us to try to make our lives more secure at all times. Living into tension and uncertainty is very difficult. However, following Jesus means we have to trust him. Jesus calls us into a new future. Jesus calls us to live into the Kingdom of Heaven, a very different future than the past. The Forward Day by Day reflection for today says this, "Maybe Lot's wife thinks she needs a minute to grieve, to take tally of the good old days. But Jesus asks us not to look back, to move ahead. Give your life into his hands. Entrust your future to Jesus - for there, and only there - can we li...

Part of the greatest joy and frustration in our lives is that certain aspects of it cannot be planned for, events never happen when you expect them. Expectations come up over and over again in the gospel story of Luke, usually with Jesus breaking other people's ideas of who he should be and what he should be doing. Indeed, listen to the stories he tells! The story in the passage for today from chapter 14, a man decides to share a great dinner with lots of people. He wants to share his abundance with others. He wants to share his joy with others, to share with them the substance of life, not only food, but community. Yet, his guests make excuses about showing up. They were not open to the unexpected in their lives and they turn down this open opportunity and invitation to participate in the man's joy. One says he has to tend to some land, another has some oxen to deal with, another has just gotten married. All important aspects of life, but all things which keep them from parti...

In mathematics there are functions everything has a function despite not being as you might wish everything has a function the sun itself has its function changing hydrogen to helium providing light and heat for us to use but there are many tunnels, with many lights and each light can only illuminate that which you allow yourself to see however, the critical point is not the light nor the seeing, nor the feeling but the entire function for without the sun, there would be no life. Life, life they say is more than the sum of its parts. But life is not a sum, nor a series it is a continuous ongoing experience a function of useless carbon Our lives are made up of the critical points where we choose to really live we may not see them as they fly we may not even ever guess as to the function defining our lives But everyone has a light a light with which to see the past and fight the dark the dark of empty loneliness of ...

"He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours." Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: "Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, and to whom I was like to give offense." This is a portion of Robert Frost's poem, Mending Wall.  The poem talks about mending a wall in the spring with the neighbor on the other side.  It goes through how the wall fell apart, and as we heard, we hear him wonder about why there is a wall in the first place. The only thing the neighbor says in the poem is "Good fences make good neighbours." But Frost brings up a good question in these lines why do good fences make good neighbors why build a wall is it because you're walling something in or walling something out? It seems that there are good walls,...