Following the Christ Child
Christmas has passed, along with the hustle and hurry of all the preparations. A lull has arrived, inviting us to rest. This week’s scriptures,* however, recount a very different experience of the first Christmas. Soon after Jesus is born, he and his parents become refugees, fleeing to Egypt. Jesus enters the world not through safety, […]
Waiting for Christmas
Dorothy Day and the Holy Family of the Streets” by Kelly Latimore On this last Sunday of Advent, we read Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus. There are no wise men journeying towards a star, no shepherds and cattle, no choirs of angels. Instead, there is an angel telling a very scared man […]
This Little Light of Mine
The third Sunday in the Advent season of waiting for Christ invites us to joy. I confess that as daylight has diminished where I live and the news conveys the darkness of human hubris, I struggle with lifting up my heart and voice rejoicing. The gospel takes us to the jail cell of John […]
Radical Joy
My grandfather farmed tobacco for decades in rich, terra cotta- colored soil 20 miles outside Winston Salem, North Carolina. A summer evening when I was a child, while visiting my grandparents, one of their barns caught fire and burned to ashes. I was mesmerized by the brilliant blaze reaching high into the black night. A neighbor from down […]