Wellsprings
Sometimes we think that the Gay Rights movement started with the riot at Stonewall Inn or that the Civil Rights movement began the day Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, but of course they didn’t. They started long, long before those iconic moments. They are the moments around which something that had been building coalesced. Something that had been building in people’s hearts and minds for years. When a new social movement breaks out and…
Is He Quite Safe?
There’s a passage in the first book in the Narnia series, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe when the children are startled to discover that Aslan is a lion. It goes like this: “Is he — quite safe?” Susan asks. “I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.” “That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” replies Mrs. Beaver, “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else silly.”…
The Glory of Christ
Fr. Barry’s sermon is available here: Glory of Christ
Hineni – I’m Ready My Lord
Luke 21:5-19 Lord give us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. You want it Darker – Leonard Cohen This has been a difficult and emotional week. Many of the people who voted for Donald Trump as our next President did so for good reasons, perhaps because they wanted change, or because they are lifelong Republicans and couldn’t imagine voting for a Democrat.…
All Saints
Today we celebrate All Saints. The church I grew up in was All Saints so this was always a special day with lots of processions and incense. I think it’s still my favorite festival of the year, because unlike the major feasts which celebrate Christ, this one celebrates us. It’s our day. We often think of saints as people in icons and stained glass; people who did amazing things; in many cases people that today we would treat with therapy…
Zacchaeus meets Jesus
This is what I remember from Sunday School: Zacchaeus was a very little man and a very little man was he, He climbed up into the sycamore tree for the Savior he wanted to see, And when the Savior came that way he looked up into the tree, And said, “Zacchaeus, now you just come down for I’m coming to your house for tea.” This is such a great story of the little chief tax-collector’s encounter with Jesus and it has such…
Transformative Grace
Luke 18:9-14 In our Thursday discussion about the life and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, someone said something that I hear quite often around these parts. I agree with it and yet it also makes me uncomfortable. They said, “Being a Christian isn’t what you believe, it’s how you live.” “Being a Christian isn’t what you believe, it’s how you live.” Today’s parable helps me understand why it makes me uncomfortable. Most of the faults of the Pharisees came from over-striving…
Baptism
I was baptized one Sunday afternoon, surrounded by my family and godparents, when I was just four weeks old. Not because I was sickly, but because the Vicar wanted a baby to baptize on Mothering Sunday. In contrast, Constantine the Great, the 4th Century emperor embraced Christianity when he was 40 but didn’t get baptized until twenty five years later, when he knew he was dying. As a teenager, I decided that my baptism was null and void since only…
Praise God!
For five years starting when I was eleven, I went to an evangelical Bible class every Sunday afternoon. This gave me a wonderful grounding in the Scriptures, which I still draw upon today, but it also left me with some rather odd ideas. For instance, I was told that you could always tell a Christian because their mouth went up at the corners. This has caused me some problems because as you can plainly see, my mouth at rest turns…
Joyful, joyful
Last Sunday I went to hear Dolly Parton at the Santa Barbara Bowl. I was amazed and enthralled by her ability to hold thousands of people spell-bound as she talked about her family and her friends, sang old songs and new, and cracked jokes for hours… I want to be like her when I’m 70. What struck me most about Dolly was her joy. Her laugh seems to erupt irrepressibly out of her, as though she has a great store…