It’s here. Whether our advent waiting has grown as heavy as a filling womb or has raced and jittered headlong to a distracted end. Either way it’s here: the close of waiting and the opening of wonder. Because the “it” is a “he”. And, suddenly, we have far less than we wanted and far, far …
Yearly Archives: 2002
Sunday Week 4 of Advent B
Why here, why now, and why Mary? … I wonder… Maybe, in part, because God has a liking for the edge of nowhere, with the poor, the barren, and the lowly. Maybe that’s why God dodges the palace, dodges the emperors’ city, dodges the learned and the rich and all the mighty in any way. …
December 19th
My brother Phil and his wife Jen discovered a couple of weeks ago that she was pregnant and a second child was on the way, a brother or a sister to my beautiful little niece Becky. Great Advent news! Five days later that little life was lost when Jenny miscarried in the night. What can …
Sunday Week 3 of Advent B
Part of our community Christmas is a gift-exchange … but with a twist. Every one buys something simple, wraps it, and puts the gift under the tree. Then come the day we each draw a number from the hat and the person with number one gets to pick a present and open it. Easy! But …
Saturday Week 1 of Advent (St Ambrose)
Did you notice how over the top Isaiah sounds when he’s trying to raise the expectations of a defeated, disillusioned people? No longer the bread of suffering and the water of distress—instead a world transformed and full of every heart’s desire: water for the thirsty, pasture for the animals, bread to satisfy a hungry soul, …
Wednesday Week 1 of Advent
Anybody here from Birmingham? Good! Sometime in my youth there was a children’s program called ‘Inigo Pipkin’ and its highlight was a puppet pig—who’s name escapes me—who every day, in a bad Brummie accent would shove his snout into his grub and cry with gusto ‘I like food’. ‘I like food.’ I, too, like food …
Tuesday Last Week of Year II
Look around you – no go on look! — all these things you are gazing at now – the time will come when not a single one will be left – all will be destroyed. … Just take another look – what do you see? walls and floors and furniture, people, friends, strangers – precious …
Monday Week 31 Year II
There’s a rather cynical theological adage that goes, “Jesus preached the kingdom of God but what we got was the Church”. There’s a touch of that when you compare the two readings today. Paul wants unity above all else and paid for in the currency of humility and self-effacement. He has a community to look …
Wednesday Week 30 Year II
Both those readings make my skin crawl a little—Paul with his comfortable hierarchies and Luke with his tough message to try, try, and try again to enter the kingdom even though you’ll likely as not fail. Like I said they both upset me. I don’t believe anyone has a fixed station in life they have …
Friday Week 29 Year II
Signs are funny things, rarely straightforward, often misread. Road signs we can manage: once you’ve learned the code you’ve only yourself to blame if you get them wrong. “Well, officer, I thought that meant I had to go over 30 miles an hour.” But try reading the human signs in a relationship and you know …