A Positively Poetic Priest

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...

28 August 2016  Proper 17C  Imagine with me for a moment planning for your daughter's wedding.  Some of you have been on that train before, some of you are still looking forward to doing that in the future, and some of us may never do such a thing, but imagine it with me for a moment. Everyone is getting ready for the big day in the months leading up to it, and you spend countless hours checking out the banquet hall, picking out the table settings, the food and the order of its serving. You pay thousands of dollars in anticipation of the biggest party you'll ever throw. Then one day your daughter comes home with devastating news. The marriage is off. The wedding is not going to happen. In the after math of the emotional storm, you remember that you have already paid for a lavish four course meal in one of the ritziest halls in town.  What are you going to do?  A couple of years ago, a couple in Atlanta found themselves in this very situation. Do yo...

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." No, wait, wrong story. "In the beginning, God created." Yes, but that's not tonight's story. "In the beginning the word was with God and the word was God. And the word was made flesh and lived among us." Yes, that is the story we are telling. But, hold on a second, let's go back to the first one. It would seem rather unfortunate to be angry about existence, but many people are angry about their existence. Their lives are not how they would like them to be. For many us, truly there are things about our lives that make us very angry. Or things that we wish wasn't true. We wish that no one we knew had cancer. We wish that war was not as prevalent as it is. We wish that political fights did not strip people of the dignity and acceptance that we might have had. We live in a world where police have to tell parents their ...