Blessed Are You
Today’s gospel reading* takes me back to a former workplace and a particular co-worker and his response to the everyday greeting, “How are you?” “I am blessed,” he would say; not the typical “Fine” or “OK” or “It’s been rough” or this or that, but always, simply, “I am blessed.” Many years have passed since […]
Extravagant Abundance
Extravagant abundance was Jesus’ signature style. In today’s Gospel passage,* that unnerving profusion is manifested at Lake Gennesaret. Jesus tells Simon to take his boat back out in the lake and cast his fishing nets out again, though was exhausted from having just been fishing all night. After some well-justified resistance, Simon did as Jesus […]
The Road Ahead
Fresh from lonely desert life, dust still under his fingernails, Mary and Joseph’s son came home to teach. Home from the wilderness to the place and people who raised him. His work would begin here. The place looks and feels different… smaller somehow. From the seat in his childhood sabbath meeting house, a place where […]
In the Power of the Spirit
Often in meetings for discernment, when divisiveness is the tone, I take a deep breath and remember the Spirit is not divided. What I want, for myself and all of us, is to tune into the harmonizing movement of the Spirit. That is what discernment is all about, distinguishing between different voices and choosing the […]