Month: April 2015

the garden

  When we gather as Christians, coming together to love on one another, we rub off on each other the way a bee leaves pollen from one flower on his or her hive-mates.  This process of pollen dusting in the hive contributes to the cross -pollination of the gardens into...

A mass of quiet ones in a bouquet

I love the way the light streams into the cathedral nave in the late afternoon. The glass refracts the light into the blues and oranges which architects reserve for feminine, nurturing spaces like churches, nurseries, hospitals and dining rooms.  They portray saints, tall and elegant in their great  vestments even...

Sparked joy and stroreage boxes

These bees are living on the roof of our cathedral, busy preparing for a robust summer of flight; cleaning, collecting and production. While you and I are making early and hopeful lists, planning for summer vacations, our cathedral bees are busy cleaning their hive.  They are collecting the corpses of...

Prayer and hot wax

The icon of Saint Anthony of Egypt, the first solitary and the first monastic of the church's recognition Egg tempera on plaster and carved wood, Mount Athos, 2000 The Oratory on Grape Street The candle is lit, white and cold - the wax not yet pooled as liquid nor even...

living out our Imago Dei

The myrrh-bearing women approach the tomb with their gifts in-hand, only to find that Jesus has risen.  They are told that Jesus is not here.  So what did they do with the gifts they brought?  What do you do with myrrh - a tree sap so costly that its cost...

not so o’er

When the women approach the empty tomb in the icon of the myrrh-bearing women, the angel's wings fling off to the left along with the mountains.  Everything in the icon points away form the empty tomb because, in an icon, anything with height tends to point towards or wrap around...

Easter people dressing a corpse

When the three myrrh-bearing women of the great Easter Icon approach the tomb, they are stuck in what they have always known much the way we are stuck in failed marriages, failed friendships, failed religious systems.  They have followed this "Jesus" along this path that has turned out, seemingly, to...

things in an Easter jail

Sometimes I wonder if, perhaps, we are in a golden cage, with the lock on the inside and the key in the lock -  a golden cage of materialism in a field of green with a stream nearby and a bright blue sky overhead.  I wonder sometimes if we have...

Friendship: Easter antidotes

Friends gathered around me recently and hosted me for dinner.  They made me a meal, poured me scotch - expensive scotch, even though they knew I could not taste it - and then, after dinner, they sat me down with evident excitement and read to me as the cool night...

doubting anxious thoughts

  this past week we celebrated the first Sunday of Easter on which we retold the story of "doubting Thomas." Sermon in hand, I went to mount the pulpit aware that what I had written was not the sermon for that moment, on that day.  Instead I said this: Most...