By the Sea, on the Road

by

Third Sunday of Easter
Acts 9:1-6(7-20)
John 21:1-19

A few years ago, my wife Lisa and three young kids joined me for the first time at the EP Gathering in Chicago, making a family vacation of it. During the time we spent in that metropolis, we took in some museums, visited Lake Michigan, and saw the fish at the aquarium. It was a busy few days. But of all the things we did, simply getting around might have been the most stressful. For kids used to walking down the sidewalks of Erwin, Tennessee (population 8,000), attempting to navigate the hustle and bustle of a city of millions was a new experience altogether, and as a parent, it was important to me to make sure they did it safely. It was up to me and Lisa to take their hands when we came to a busy intersection. It was up to me and Lisa to speak clearly and sometimes firmly as we gave instructions about how we were going to catch a bus or hop on a train before the doors closed.

Throughout those few days in Chicago, our chief responsibilities as parents were to keep everyone together and to keep everyone safe. The kids’ chief responsibilities were simply to trust us, to listen to us, and of course, to obey us. It’s hard to be an adult sometimes. But it’s hard to be a kid, too. Responsibility is hard. So is dependence. And for those of us called to follow Christ, living in that tension is sometimes the hardest thing of all. Read more

A New Creation

Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
2 Corinthians 5:6-17

So here we are, once again in the long Season After Pentecost (after Easter, after Lent, after Epiphany, well, you get the idea). Having moved through the great, narrative seasons that remind us of who Jesus was and is and is to come, we are launched into a season of deep, practiced discipleship, out in the world God so loves. And just as the Earth is literally in a physically different place from the last time we encountered the Season After Pentecost, so too is the world, our congregations, and ourselves. Continuing to travel in Jacob Bernoulli’s Spira mirabilis* the hope is that we are spiraling ever closer to the final fulfillment of God’s Creation. Read more

Learning to Forage

First Sunday After Epiphany
Acts 19:1-7
Mark 4:1-11
The trail descends from the pavement above, concrete giving way to packed mud, quartz, and shale, roots running here and there across the path. Below the trail, the ground slopes, settling into a creek that eventually flows to the Arkansas river. Throughout the late summer, and well into the fall, this slope would be pocked by the orange trumpets of chanterell mushrooms, fruiting from the unseen mycelium below the surface of the soil. On our weekly walks in the woods, my daughters would compete for the privlege of cutting them from their stems, collecting them in the cloth bags we’d brought for the purpose.

This was one of my family’s first attempts at foraging, going for the ready pickings of easily identified mushrooms that no one else seemed to be harvesting in our local urban woodland. There was something delightful about gathering food each week from the forrest floor, food that we’d done nothing to earn other than noticing its ripeness for the taking. My small exercise in gathering was a reminder both of the abundance of the world and of the reality that the best things available are not what we can buy, but what we can accept as gifts. Read more

The Next Step in the Churches

First Sunday After Christmas
Galatians 4:4-7
In these days following the joyous birth of Christ, we consider the world’s response and, in some cases, its terrible pushback. In many traditions, this week’s daily Bible readings focus on Stephen (Deacon and Martyr), John (Apostle and Exile), and The Holy Innocents (Martyrs).
Jesus’ entrance into the world provokes intense reactions. Read more

Be Transformed

I am starting to write this as the eclipse happens, after getting a chance to safely see some of the action through proper viewing glasses being passed around at the market. Earlier this summer we took in a local astronomy night with larger telescopes that gave us a chance to view Jupiter with three of its moons visible and Saturn, tilted at just the right angle to see its magnificent rings. I have always loved the perspective these events provide—we are gifted with the reminder, if we take the time to ponder it, of our tiny stature and brief sojourn upon the Earth against the backdrop of Creation’s majesty. None of us controls this, or owns it, and many of us can experience it together, uniting us in our life here on this blue jewel of a planet.

Brother Guy Consolmagno S.J., Pope Francis’ official astronomer, reflected to journalist Elizabeth Diaz last week that the eclipse “reminds us of the immense beauty in the universe that occurs outside of our own petty set of concerns. It pulls us out of ourselves and makes us remember that we are part of a big and glorious and beautiful universe.” Read more