“Arami Oved Avi” (Ah-RAM-ee Oh-VED Ah-VEE) or, as we heard it in the reading from Deuteronomy, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor.” Today’s Old Testament lesson contains a phrase we might be tempted to skip over. After all, it sounds a lot like one of those “begat” sections of the Bible, and in any case,
Our Ancestor was a Wandering Foreigner
This Lent: Epiphany’s Catechumenate
Adult Baptism and Confirmation Class March 2 | 6:00 – 7:15 pm March 13, 20, 27 & April 4, 10 | 4:00 – 5:15 pm Christie House Library As Lent approaches, I want to invite you to consider being part of the catechumenate. It is a word for the ancient time of Christian instruction
Homily for the Feast of the Annunciation
Society teaches us to set our sights on a goal and to organize life around the achievement of that goal, in the same way that you might choose a point on a map and then plan a route to arrive there. What happens if we take away the goal, and put down the map, and
Pilgrimages From Home
Not long before the pandemic began last year, some fantastic Epiphanites loaned me three books before we knew what would unfold during these intervening 12 months. “A year later, these three books (kept in Ziploc bags as I do since I worked in a bookstore where we could read any book for free as long
Confrontng Evil When it Lives in the Light
I’ve finished a book recently called The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It’s a story of a young girl whose brother dies and mother abandons her into foster care. It takes place in Germany during WWII. The town she lands in is Molching, with a family living on the wrong side of the tracks, barely
Aunt Maria and Zeal
“Zeal for your house will consume me.” That is a word I get excited about, zeal. It is a word that gets a bad rap—a zealot, a person blindly compelled by an idea, irrespective of its costs, particularly cost to relationship. I believe zeal means just the opposite. I believe zeal is all about relationship.
A Perfect Season for Consideration
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….” In some ways, the words of Charles Dickens capture the essence of this pandemic for our nation. Indeed, it is easy to chronicle the Tale of Two Cities-esque blight of COVID-19: poverty, unemployment, depression, increase in suicide, ruptured education, malnutrition…all the things that
Full Connexion | SANCTUS III, Feast of John & Charles Wesley
Today, we celebrate John and Charles Wesley as Episcopal Saints, which is a little weird, because the Wesleys are generally known as the founders of Methodism. I don’t know a ton about John and Charles Wesley, but I do know that Methodists and Episcopalians don’t tend to worship in the same buildings… And yet, for
The Bigger the Hair, the Closer to Jesus
Good Morning Christians, Seekers, and Friends! Good mornin’ and Howdy! Are you prepared for our big fast on the 29, 30th an 31st of February? Ha ha! Sorry, feeling a little extra joyful today as I’ve been thinking a lot about last week’s Have a Heart and what a wonderful night we had with you—even