This week I experienced a deep personal trauma—I turned forty. Now for half of you this evening that’s all in the past and no big deal and for the other half it’s still far enough away to forget. But forty crept up on me unawares and bit. I hadn’t been expecting it—hey, what’s another birthday …
Category Archives: Berkeley
Sunday Week 2 of Easter Year C
Poor Thomas. Thomas the Twin. Doubting Thomas. It seems we never remember poor Thomas except for what he isn’t—he isn’t his brother and he isn’t faithful, he doesn’t believe. But Thomas is—in his own right—the first and greatest of believers. And what he comes to believe is still astonishing. The disciples are huddled in fear …
Sunday Week 1 of Easter
I live in Berkeley, just north of the Cal campus, just across from a fraternity house, the band fraternity in fact. And whatever the reputation that such places might have this house is a decent one, pretty quiet, pretty considerate. And as part of that consideration there was a knock at the door last Wednesday …
Sunday Week 4 of Lent Year C(A)
This is our prayer today: Let us see. Let us not be blind. Dear God remove our blindness! It’s the prayer we will pray for our catechumens on their journey out of darkness to the light of Easter. But it had better be our prayer today too. For we are blind. We are blind because …
Sunday Week 2 of Lent Year C
A terrifying darkness with smoke and fire and animals torn into pieces. A mountaintop brilliance with burning figures out of legend and a voice booming from a darkening cloud. What do these two moments, one from the Hebrew scriptures and the other from the Christian, have in common. One thing is terror. Abram is terrified. …
Ash Wednesday
I have a dirty secret. I suppose since you are here that you too have one. We share a dirty secret. And today we are ready to go public. We are ready to let the truth emerge, we are ready to walk from here with the mark of our origins plain for everyone to see, …
Sunday Week 7 Year C
I stand before you this day to tell you that Jesus got it wrong. Either that or we did. Here he is again this morning, speaking to the victims: to those who are hated, who are cursed, who are maltreated; victims of violence, victims of theft and plunder. It seems like he forgot to speak …
Sunday Week 4 Year C
It came flooding back this weekend, the memory, clear and embarrassing, of sitting in my mother’s house one Holy Week afternoon, aged twenty or so, watching Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Zeffirelli’s sweet and oh-so-sixties story of Francis of Assisi. Watching it, trying to be above its sugar and sentiment, and failing—instead being drawn in, being …
Ascension Sunday
There’s a strange thing going on with time in these readings. We start with the very beginning of St. Luke’s book about the life and ministry of the early Jesus movement and finish with the very end of St. Luke’s book about the life and ministry of Jesus in the flesh. Time is out of …
Baptism of the Lord Year C
Oreo Cookies, Family Photos, and Steve Young. Not necessarily in that order. Item: Family Albums. “Who’s that?” ask Laura, to her little one. And with a roll of her eyes, as if the question was a no-brainer, Amy says, “that’s me.” This is New Year’s Day and the old photos are out and we’re looking …