Ethel was a distinctively unhappy person, gifted in sharing that spirit. That spirit was indeed contagious. As she made people around her unhappy, her loneliness deepened. Even her children paid…

Church geek alert: Today finds us half way through a special week in the church calendar. It's called the week of Prayer for Christian Unity. It runs from January 18…

An Inescapable Network of Mutuality For many reasons, it is meet and right this morning to recall the words from Dr. King included below, part of a letter written from…

I recently heard New Year's resolutions described as a to-do list for the first week of January. I'm wondering on this Monday morning, one week into 2018, how you are…

Who moved my drishti? Time for a review of last year. Among my last year's resolutions: to show up at yoga classes more often, for a variety of reasons. One…

A few years back, as I was working on the Rector's Christmas Sermon, it suddenly began to rhyme. This morning, I share that seasonal doggerel, based on Luke's gospel, with apologies…

Bearing witness If you've been hanging around church this December, you couldn't help but run into John the Baptist. He gets star billing in Advent. He has a lot to…

A recent email reminded me of a favorite book by Will Willimon, Methodist bishop, teacher at Duke Divinity (Sorry, Tarheels), and extraordinarily gifted preacher. When Bishop Willimon lived in Durham,…

Legend has it that as St. Augustine was shifting from the rather active social life of his youth (euphemism alert) to a life in the church, he prayed to the…

I've been told that the preacher should always have the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Some days that's harder than others. Last week, there was…