Week of February 9, 2020
“How dear to me is your dwelling, O Lord of hosts! My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.” The first verse of the Psalm 84, heard last Sunday, presents a joyful, almost ecstatic feeling of the psalmist to be…
Week of February 2, 2020
In the last week there has been at a suspected case of Coronavirus at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, with the patient having recently traveled from China. That patient is in quarantine and at the time of the writing of this article the virus has not been definitively identified. However, it brings back into our common discourse the…
Week of January 26, 2020
In last Sunday’s Gospel reading, Jesus is passing by John the Baptist when two of John’s students begin to follow Jesus. The Gospel says, “[Jesus] said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’” (John 1:38) There is, I would imagine, a number of responses to that question: wisdom, hope, love, etc. The two answer, “Where are you…
Week of January 19, 2020
It feels like one of those weeks where I am really seeing the whole “Loving Your Neighborhood” mission being made real. First, I’m pleased to share with all of you that I have been selected to serve on the Lawrence Special Education Advisory Committee which is composed of parents of special needs kids. L-SEAC works with the…
Week of January 12, 2020
Nestled among the various Christmas-related holidays is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. In the Episcopal Church this is observed on December 28, but is actually a bit of a follow-up to the events depicted in the Epiphany of Our Lord, January 6. In the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew King Herod, having been tipped…
Week of January 5, 2020
Some of you may have seen on Facebook that on New Year’s Eve I took an accidental fall down a stair and badly sprained my ankle. I wasn’t skating or anything exciting like that; I can’t even say I was partying for the holiday–I had just finished Chinese takeout and was heading downstairs to watch television. In…
Week of December 22, 2019
Trinity said goodbye to a member of our community last week. Every Thursday several volunteers from Community Living Opportunities (CLO) arrive at the Trinity Interfaith Food Pantry to pick up a list of requested items to be purchased at a local store to fill out the shelves. These volunteers are developmentally disabled, and are accompanied by…
Week of December 15, 2019
So one of my more unusual personal Advent traditions is that when the readings from Isaiah (11:1-10) appear in our lectionary describing the “Peaceable Kingdom” I reintroduce myself to the works of American painter Edward Hicks. Hicks (1780-1849) was a Quaker minister and artist who painted a depiction of the Peaceable Kingdom 62 times in…
Week of December 8, 2019
Amidst the onset of Advent and the approach of Christmas in this liturgical season, we have perhaps forgotten one other change in our worship life together: the switch to the Gospel of Matthew. For those who do not know, the readings in church are determined based on a three-year cycle with begins on the first…
Week of December 1, 2019
As the nation gathers together for a communal expression of Thanksgiving, I would like to just celebrate the fact that God calls us to gratitude every day of our lives, should we choose to listen. I believe that gratitude is the cornerstone of Christian spirituality and discipleship, especially in the way that it helps us avoid…