Pageantry and passion
There are at least two ways of approaching Scripture. I’m going to loosely categorize them as the Engineer’s way and the English Major’s way. The hypothetical engineer wants to know the facts of the situation and how these fit with other known facts; the English Major is more interested in metaphoric layers of symbolism in the passage. This morning’s reading is especially troubling to the engineer. There are more unanswered questions than there are certainties with this narrative. Where did…
The Welcoming Jesus
The Welcoming Jesus at the National Cathedral’s Children’s Chapel.
God Likes Us!
In the Dickens story, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge the miserable and cold-hearted miser is visited by the ghost of his former partner, Marley, who also spent his life making money and exploiting the poor. Marley warns Scrooge that if he doesn’t change his ways he will, like Marley, be damned. But in order to give him one last chance at redemption, Scrooge is visited by three spirits, the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost…
The Bigger Picture
I don’t usually watch television, but every morning I check the headlines on the BBC News app. This morning the first one is “Row over Trump team email trove.” If I were the BBC I might have led with the deadly attack on a Methodist church in Pakistan or the mudslide that has buried a remote village in Chile. Life is hard, and now we have learned our connectedness with others across the planet, we know more than ever about…
Hope in Uncertain Times
Copyright Matthew Fox 12/3/17
Branchings of the Vine
John 15:1-5
All Saints Day
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” I sometimes wonder what it means to be proud. Am I proud of who I am? Is that okay? And why? Did I have anything to do with it? What have I done to take pride in? Upon pondering these things I find myself thinking that I’m proud to be a child of God, but I can’t take credit for that. I can say I’m proud…