Month: February 2015

pride

Lent is a time in which to consider arrogance.  It can sneak up on one when least expected.  We all know things we are good at. And we even know what they are, itemizing them like a princess fiddling with her pearls. We too often let arrogance run rampant when...

trimming lives

Bonsai trees such as this one are formed by doing a lot of trimming.  Each branch is trimmed and trimmed and trimmed, so that the tree grows in a certain direction with a certain form which emerges from the confinement of the cuts.  Lent is a good time in which...

friends found

  What was in that candle's light that opened and consumed me so quickly? Come back, my friend. The form of our love is not a created form. Nothing can help me but that beauty. There was a dawn I remember when my soul heard something from your soul. I...

Enough, and how we find it in all the bounty

This bee was hard at work one day when I became its paparazzi, snapping its photo in my admiration for its beauty and hard work.  I love bees and I love the way they teach us. Lent inspires the question in me which asks what "enough" is.  The season is...

screaming pink

This morning in the Morning Office we say in psalm 102  " let my cry come before you" and I wonder if we really do.  What would it mean for us to really cry out to God?  It would mean that we believe that God exists.  It would mean that...

lenten leaches and lilies

My father loved to care for the lambs when they were first born at Dovehaven, our home in southern Quebec. The lambing season was always a tense time, since the lambs would emerge from sheep-wombs at any time and my mother and father would need to be ready with warm...

lenten disciplines

This is Ash Wednesday.  It begins a season of examination in which we ask ourselves the hard questions needing to be asked: "How have I failed to live in Christ's likeness?  With whom have I been unkind? In what ways have I participated in systems which perpetuate poverty? Who do...

cream and Lent

The gospel reading today is from John's gospel and it is the accounting of John The Baptist's baptizing work and his call to be a voice in the wilderness on this the eve of Lent into which we plunge tomorrow. These are the salts on my dining room table in...

pre-lent brilliance and compassion

The prophet Isaiah speaks the "holy, holy, holy " of the sixth chapter of the book named for him and thereby ushers us into the Sanctus of our liturgy. As we emerge for the Epiphany season and begin the work of Lent, it is time to prepare for the shift...

beloved hands

"I have taken you by the hand and kept you" These words from the prophet Isaiah come from today's readings for the feast of a saint who died for the poor and the oppressed. (The entire passage is below.) What does it mean for a God of glory and majesty...