What is sacrifice?  Where does our faith really lie?  Why is it so much easier to live in doubt and darkness, fear and fright, rather than hope and trust?  These are the questions I have often asked myself in times that were good and not so good.  But they were never the questions I thought […]

“Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.” I’ve spent some time this week thinking about mortality. I’m betting you have too. I haven’t been thinking about my own mortality so much as how death seems to have become a part of life in a much more cultural […]

In the name of one God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. As Jesus said to the Samaritan woman this day, we do not have to worship at Ascension to still worship together. I want to tell you a story about my dog Cuthbert, or Cutty as many of you know him. My sweet little […]

Torah is the law of God and is recorded in the first five books of the Old Testament or the Pentateuch as our Jewish friends would call it.  Torah consists of 613 commandments passed down by Moses.  Of the 613 commandments there are 365 negative commandments or “thou shall not” commandments and 248 positive commandments […]

It seems an odd day for us to be drawn to the church.  The altar has been stripped, the crosses veiled..  Though we will receive reserved sacrament, we will not celebrate a Eucharist today—we will not celebrate anything.  Jesus is dead. Do we come because we are drawn into suffering—bystanders rubber necking their way through […]

I have always been fascinated by church architecture.  I remember when I was a little girl and our Sunday school teacher took us into the church and had us run around the space with one hand on the wall, tracing the shape of the church.  When we finished she gathered us in the middle of […]

There is a sensuous aspect to our liturgy that incorporates all of our senses—taste, sight, touch, hearing, even smell.  To worship in the Episcopal Church is a full body experience—we stand, sit, and kneel even move around to offer one another the peace and come forward for the sacrament.  We juggle books, shake hands, drink […]

Psalm 32 You are my hiding-place; you preserve me from trouble; * you surround me with shouts of deliverance. The Vietnam War was in full swing when my father was in college.  He played baseball for Maryland but was restless and felt he should do something of greater purpose with his life.  Most of the […]

My neighbors have a row of fig trees in their yard right next to the road.  Every summer when I walk by, I notice a sign in the yard that says, “Free figs, you pick.”  Their fig trees are typically laden with the fruit and when picked at the right time, it is sweet and […]

The crack of lightning was terrifying and the accompanying boom of thunder left everything still and silent in its wake–it was as if the entire forest was afraid to move.  The silence didn’t last for more than a few seconds when the creatures who lived there resumed their scurrying to find shelter from the rain—the […]