Sometimes God has no right to be merciful! If God wasn’t so damned merciful the world would be a much better place. Why does God let us get away with so much? How is that we can murder each other and nothing happens? That we can torture the innocent, deprive the poor, and defile the …
Author Archives: Rob
Feast of Michael, Gabriel, & Raphael, Archangels
Let Annie Dillard deliver the homily today. She knows more about angels than I ever will. This is from “A Field of Silence” in Teaching a Stone to Talk. “The farm! … I lived there once and I have seen, from behind the barn, the roadside pastures heaped with silence … silence heaped on the …
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Sunday Week 25 Year A
The reign of God is like an SAT examination: some worked night and day exhausting themselves in preparation; some paid thousands in coaching fees to learn the secret tricks; and some went out partying every night and guessed the answers. All got the same score. The reign of God is like a soccer game: one …
Sunday Week 24 Year A
Wrath and anger are hateful things yet we hug them tight. Why the hell do we do that? Any ideas? Cause it baffles me! We hug tight the things that hurt us, we rehearse our hurt in words, honing them to an edge, even when we know they’ll echo around inside us cutting us as …
Sunday Week 22 Year A
Well as they, “Denial isn’t just a big river in Egypt.” There are two Peters offered us throughout the gospel: there’s the rock of stability, the pillar of faith, who sees the truth about Jesus and speaks it boldly … and then there’s the stumbling block, the well-meaning, shortsighted buffoon who, again and again, stands …
Wednesday Week 20 Year I
Most of the earthquakes I’ve experienced while here in Berkeley have happened at night and, although they jolt me awake to that state of unnatural attentiveness that’s not quite sure whether to run or hide, it’s hardly the best time for considered reflection. But last night, seated at the dinner table, when the world bucked …
Feast of the Assumption
I said this was an embarrassing feast. And I’d like to convince you of that by starting with a quiz. Eyes closed please… Paying attention to what you are feeling… OK … first question: what does God like most about your body? Just stand there naked before God and see what God’s response is? We …
St Clare
How fast does a bullet travel? Something shot across the Atlantic Ocean today at 1800 miles per hour, and gouged a trail through Europe. Billions watched it pass in awe—at least if the weather permitted–a total eclipse. Here’s what Annie Dillard has to say about surviving a total eclipse: “… I heard screams. People on …
Wednesday Week 18 Year I
Isn’t it the story of our lives? We see a land of promise laid out before us. We hear the voice of a God delighted to be giving us all we have ever desired. There we are wandering in desert, sand in our shoes, backs burdened under the weight of all we have been through …
Sunday Week 16 Year A
Someone famous—whose name of course escapes me at the moment—someone once said that you should pray with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Apart from the problem of not having enough hands to turn over the pages there’s something missing from that advice. No one ever says where in either …