Faith in Progress

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” includi...

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 ...

July 15, 2018 Amos 7:7-15 And the Lord said to Amos, “What do you see?”  I speak to you in the name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen. A while back my husband Holden spent his free time for a few months finishing part of our basement.  With a lot of hard work, he turned it from a dark and dingy place full of pipes and insulation and wires  to a relatively light and comfortable place for the kids to play.  It was an amazing accomplishment. The problem is that you have to go down a set of stairs to get there.  And it turns out that when Holden framed the stairs, something didn’t work out quite as planned, and the 5 th stair from the bottom ended up about a 1/2 inch taller than it ought to be.   It seems like such a small difference – you can barely even tell by looking at the stairs that that one step is a touch different.   But just about every person – child or adult – who goes up our basement stairs trips on t...

July 1, 2018 Mark 5:21-43 I’ve now been working here at St. Paul’s for exactly a month, and — I cannot tell a lie — it has been something of a whirlwind.  You all have been so welcoming and friendly, but there are a lot of you and your names are awfully slippery!  The staff is helpful and funny, and I’m starting to catch on to who does what.  I’m learning how lots of machines work (though it’s possible that Greg Milliken’s name may always live on my internal voicemail).  I’m beginning to get a sense of the systems — everything from how documents are shared in the Google Drive to the process of bulletin creation.  I’ve been getting immersed in wedding preparation and baptisms, pastoral care and outreach, liturgy formation, and the workings of your amazingly dedicated vestry.  But I’m fairly certain I’ve only begun to do what lies at the heart of this job.  Meanwhile, my family is still very much in the process of figuring how things will work w...

For Bear Tuesday, May 22, 2018 Jefferson Funeral Chapel Today is the hardest of days.  We gather here to grieve for Bear -- husband, father, brother, son, friend and coach and so much more -- gone much too soon and suddenly.  We gather in sorrow, struggling to find some sense of hope.  We gather in pain, hoping to find some sense of comfort.  We gather with questions and regrets, needing so badly to find a sense of peace. Barb, you’ve lost your husband, your best friend, your confidante.  Audrey and Rachel, you’ve lost your funny, proud, loving dad.  And there are no words to make that better, nothing that can fill that hole.  I know Bear still loves you, he is still proud of you, he will never be far from you.  And yet all of us know that isn’t the same as his being here with you.  Please know that this room today is full of people who want to offer you our prayers, our love, and our support as you begin to reshape your lives....

Pentecost May 20, 2018 Last Sermon at St. Aidan’s I love the humanness of the start of our story from Acts today.  There the disciples gather, huddled together in sadness over the loss of their beloved leader and friend.  Fearful that the authorities may be coming for them next.  Unsure what to do or where to go.  They can’t imagine carrying on Jesus’ ministry on their own — who were they after all?  Just ordinary people — fisherman and tax collectors, brothers and friends.  There was nothing particularly holy about them other than their association with Jesus.  And so there they were, all clamped shut in that room, with their broken hearts and their tense shoulders and their befuddled minds.  Sheep without a shepherd.  I picture another group feeling a lot like that.  A group of pilgrims to Iona, after our beloved Ian Roberts collapsed in our midst. Someone once said that “[t]o journey without being changed is to be a ...