Month: January 2017

sinful desires

  In the Rite of Baptism we renounce things before we turn and embrace things.  One thing we renounce is “sinful desires” and I a wondering about that because i am teaching on the subject in church this week.  Sinful desires.  Never has a topic of discussion more led me...

courage

Courage is easiest to see in hindsight.  It has a tail, like the wake of a ship. It is best seen looking back and gathering all the little hints to it along a pathway, even though some parts of the pathway are blood-stained, some little hints red-speckled. We have courage...

hooded

We all have our themes; things to which we go back over and over again as if those people around us haven’t heard the thousand times we have said that same “old thing he says so often.” We all have those oft repeated mantras which we say so frequently that...

ambition

Jesus models a lot of things, but ambition seems not to be one. There will be ambition in any organization and of course the church adds fuel to the fire by accommodating ambition with titles, ranks and clothing.  But ambition, it seems to me, is infested vocation. Vocation is something...

chosen

  Baptismal scene from St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Denver which was, at one time, the reredos of St. Martin's Chapel of St. John's Cathedral, Denver   Sermon for January 8, 2017  The Rev. Canon Charles LaFond, Saint John’s Cathedral, Denver, CO And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he...

Callings

It is 6:00 am in Marrakech and there are five different minarets all calling the people nearby me to prayers.  They seem to be competing- a cacophony of singing and calling from every direction in the Kasbah, an area (actually the garrison) next to the Palace of the Moroccan Royal...

unexpected things

My teacher here is named Abdu.  He asked me to meditate on this passage from Rumi as we drove three hours across Morocco to the coast.  He said he had something to show me. This being human is a guest house Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression,...