Faith in Progress

December 23, 2018 Luke 1:39-55 I’m generally the first to arrive in the office on weekday mornings.  In fact, in the winter darkness lately, I’ve been picking my outfits by the light of my cell phone and tiptoeing out of the house in the semi-darkness so as not to wake up my kids.  There are some downsides to this.  Like, one day last week I arrived to find there was paint all over my sweater.  But most of the time, the benefits are greater.  Most importantly, I get to be present with my kids after school -- but also I fly down the GW Parkway with no traffic and nothing but green lights in Old Town, and arrive to limitless parking options and uncanny quiet in the office.  I’ve grown to love the office at that hour.  There is something sort of sacred about the quiet darkness. On Monday this week, I began my day as usual.  I made my way here as the sun rose over the river and got situated in my office.  Since I was on to preach today, I took the opportunity of quiet to start looki

December 12, 2018 Wednesday Eucharist Thomas Merton (December 10) I feel like I won the lottery this week! Sometimes when I’m on to preach for a Wednesday Eucharist I go looking at the possible saints to choose from and am not terribly inspired.  Sometimes they are people I haven’t heard of, or people whose saintliness feels like a bit of a stretch, or people so far in the past that I have trouble relating to them.  (Though I should admit -- thanks be to God -- that even in those weeks I do end up finding some nugget that speaks to me and inspires me, so the exercise is not in vain.) But not this week.  This week there was no question in my mind who to choose. Thomas Merton, of course!  Blessedly, his feast day was December 10, making my preaching gig today a piece of cake.  Thomas Merton, if you haven’t heard of him (which I would have trouble believing) was a 20th Century Trappist monk and one of the most-influential spiritual writers of recent times. There are tw

December 2, 2018 Luke 21:25-36 Yikes. A parishioner at my previous church used to talk about how sometimes she would hear some shocking reading, and then the priest would announce “The Gospel of the Lord!” and everyone would respond “Praise to you Lord Christ!”  And she would just look around in disbelief at the people sitting there, apparently undisturbed by what they’d just heard. She said sometimes she wanted to shake us all and shout out “WHAT? How can that possibly be good news?” I’m sure this would have been one of those readings. Here we are, minding our own business on this first weekend of Advent.  We’re looking forward to Christmas, and getting ready for it. We are starting to be surrounded by beauty and celebration. The Scottish Christmas walk this weekend.  Twinkling lights turning Old Town into a fairy world. Making pretty Advent wreaths to adorn our tables with candlelight. Starting to hear Christmas music on the radio. And we come in here, expec

November 4, 2018 The Feast  of All Saints John 11:43-44 Since we are celebrating the feast of All Saints, I have to admit that, despite having been surrounded by the mention of saints all my life in the Episcopal liturgy, I have a somewhat checkered past around the subject.   For most of my life, the universe of sainthood felt pretty small and the idea a little dubious.  I thought of saints as long-dead, super-duper, church approved people. People that I imagined always behaving perfectly – too perfectly. People that seemed more angelic than human.  The kinds of people that churches are named after. Not people I could relate to, much less be. I didn’t see them as having much of anything to do with me and my faith, and I wasn’t ever comfortable with the idea of praying to or through them. After a few people that I loved died, the idea of saints began to feel a little more relatable, although still something far off. Now, I could imagine “saints” including my mom, and my g

October 14, 2018 Mark 10:17-31 It feels odd to say this out loud, but lately I’ve been trying my hand at whittling.  It started a few years back when my son was in Cub Scouts and got his whittling badge.  At first, I was opposed to the idea of giving my 10 year old a sharp and potentially life-threatening weapon.  But the group started out carving soap with plastic knives and learned all the important rules - carve away from your body, make sure no one is in your “blood circle”, close the knife when you aren’t using it.  Miraculously, the new knife led to no blood shed. So soon my husband and daughters got into the action, sitting on the porch -- blood circle distance apart -- leaving curls of wood at their feet. It all seemed a little silly and old-fashioned to me.  But then one day, out of curiosity, I tried it too. And there was something really refreshing about taking something knobby and rough and making it smooth. There was something meditative about slowly whittling a