Almost two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast of the United States, Episcopalians continue to arrive to help with recovery. Youth groups, seminarians, Episcopal churches and leaders spend time rebuilding homes and lives, physical and emotional.
When there were still people walking the streets who had known Jesus face-to-face, the Christian community was arguing. They argued over who could share a meal. They argued over whose party represented the ‘real’ church. They argued over whether you were really a Christian if you didn’t exhibit certain spiritual gifts.
The spiritual journey of Andrea Jaeger, former tennis star, now serving as an Episcopal Dominican is featured in a video from ESPN.
For me, I can’t imagine the Lord that I worship, this Jesus Christ, actually concurring with the persecution of a minority that is already being persecuted. The Jesus who I worship is a Jesus who was forever on the side of those who were being clobbered, and he got into trouble precisely because of that.
As a church, we need to learn once again to become risk-takers, people who take risks for the Gospel, who take risks for Christ, who take risks in the service of God and one another. We have to take risks, in order to make the journey. We discover courage by doing courageous, God-like actions.
The two poles of the earth’s orbit represent extreme points along the ellipse, but they are just as much a part of the orbit as any other points are. In the best of our political differences, and church differences, and relationship differences, the same can be true. We may be at extremes, but we are in the same orbit.
The Rule has a special way of viewing the patterns and dynamics of Christian life. The whole orientation of the Rule is to the principle that God is everywhere, all the time, and thus every element of our ordinary day is potentially holy.
After some time had passed, the religious authorities plotted to kill him, but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the gates day
“Whether writing about a presidential aspirant’s latest play of the religion card, or an emerging issue being championed by a special interest group, or a poll showing that this community of faith supports that candidate, my goal is to write with an acute awareness of how religious and political passion can obscure and cloud … good judgment, moral reasoning, and analytical clarity.”
Writing in USA TODAY, Mary Zeiss Strange asks: [W]ould the man whose break from Roman Catholicism involved a revolutionary rethinking of the role of sexuality in human relationships take … a negative view of homosexuality today? Most probably, given the way his theological mind worked, he would not.