Learned Faith
Today the Episcopal Church honors Thomas Bray, a priest and missionary who our Anglican forebears dispatched to the Maryland colony around 1700. What caught my attention about this man was his passionate belief in the importance of learning for both clergy and laity. He founded nearly fifty...
C'est la Vie or C'est la Mort?
If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. He has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever you choose. Before each person is life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given.  ...
A Carpenter's Eyes
I’m not sure what possessed me to buy the book I’m currently reading – A Carpenter’s Life as Told by Houses by Larry Haun. I can barely handle a paintbrush, much less a hammer or power saw. The metaphor of building something is more appealing to me than the reality of...
But Seriously ...
“… what if Jesus wasn't kidding? What if he wasn't talking about some never-never land? What if he really did mean what he said two thousand years ago?”  ...
Dear People of St. Alban's:
During church services yesterday I introduced Suzanne Hicks, Executive Director of Hope for Humanity, Inc. Hope for Humanity is a non-profit based in Richmond, VA, and the organization that built the Hope and Resurrection School in the South Sudan. St. Alban's has supported the work...
Regaining the Shore
What do we do when we’re in a place we’ve never been before, when there is no map or companion beside us to tell us what to do next? It doesn’t take much for us to feel like we’re in uncharted territory. Loss can bring us there – the loss of a job, the loss of a...
Church Matters
I was in the pits last week. It felt like rip currents of painful news that just kept coming, and I got caught in the undertow. Do you know that feeling? One healthy decision was to withdraw from the frantic social media. Another was to be with good friends instead of slouching around the...
Stardust
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. This is always a loaded season for me, tied very much to losses in my personal life. I cared for my dying father through Lent, and he breathed his last on Maundy Thursday. As I cared for my mother years later, we went to the early morning Ash...
Invitation and Blessing
Given all that is happening in the world and in our beloved Capitol lately, during yesterday's celebration for the young boys and girls at St. Alban's who were prayed for and blessed by the church as they symbolically, or ontologically, perhaps, move from adolescence to womanhood and manhood, I...