Month: August 2015

Go ahead, swim! The water’s great!

We keep trying to find God.  Is God there if I am perfect and never sin?  Is God there in church?  Is God there in a carefully designed quiet space, worthy of a victorian novel?  Is God there in the woods on a walk in late-afternoon light?  Is God there...

breath

Yesterday, I found myself breathing. Well, that is to say, I was breathing half-breaths. Shallow breathing. When I noticed it, I paused and took a very deep breath.  Then another.  And another. When I am stressed out, my friend Rebecca looks at me and says “Breathe, Charles.” All through scripture,...

just keep going

Cooking dinner for a few friends is tricky when one can neither taste nor smell. I almost burned the caramelized onions for buckwheat savory pancakes which will support salmon and walnuts as a main course. Twenty-four onions - cooked down to about 4 cups of onion jam - rich, brown,...

drawing God

Sunday, a friend and I went to get a sandwich.  Waiting in line to order our sandwich we noticed the chalk board had its usual invitation to appease our over-caffeinated minds with a small task to accomplish so that we would not need to experience the anxiety of silly waiting,...

a potter’s parable

Once upon a time there was a man named John to whom was given many gifts. John was given the brain it took to think about and solve problems and he used that brain to get a good job.  John was given a body to carry his brain around and...

floating cards

Yesterday, seven new children were baptized at the cathedral.  They were, as the prayer book says, “all sorts and conditions.”  Some cried and others trembled,while some took it all in with wonder and others just let it happen to them.  The were marked as Christ’s own forever. To be marked...

a nest in my hair

When we face our pain-producing thoughts and deal with them by asking The Four Questions and the Turnaround ( see Byron Katie's book Loving What Is) then we deal with negative thoughts without kindness - tough love - asking  "Is it true?"  Can you be absolutely sure that it is...

am I ok?

Sometimes we all need inspiration.  The word means “to be breathed into” and has its roots in religious thought - that the Holy Spirit, or God, breathes into us and we become inspired - we become inflated.  That word, in our society is negative.  “He is inflated.”  Or “She has...

soft

  My propensity to be triggered is a problem.  Not the things that arouse the propensity. I keep thinking that suffering is the problem, but it’s not.  The problem is my propensity to react to the things that unfold in a day.  I keep thinking that those annoyances are the...

linens

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking with a woman who cares for our cathedral linens. We have 10, and as many as15, eucharistic liturgies each week.  She irons the linens we need.  I have been using those linens many times a week, for two years, and they just kept...