“Whether I carried the oil-fueled candle or the cross with a circle looping around the intersection, I’d grip my sweaty hands around the polished wood terrified it would slip out and clatter to the ground. The thought of catching the church on fire with the weak flame was terrifying on its own, but who knew what kind of eternal consequence awaited you for dropping the cross.”
“Jesus looked for leaders who were open-minded, willing to learn, to change, and to teach others. He looked for those who understood his teachings and then demonstrated them without expecting compliments or praise.”
This week Faith To Go formation team members David Tremaine and Charlette Preslar do a rapid fire discussion of all five parables Jesus tells his disciples in this week’s gospel
Today there is a pair of stories about Episcopal churches working with other organizations to support both relief and medical efforts around the pandemic. Trinity,
“Just as Le Petit Prince tamed the little fox, centering prayer takes away the busy judgments of the mind and begins to tame it. The notion of taming the little foxes of our minds, and using the eyes of our heart to see rightly seems especially good for us right now. Our beautiful minds with its “unruly wills and affections” just like the prayer book says, often do need taming.”
Eric Metoyer comes back to update us on THE WIRE
“Jesus is not our accuser, but our advocate and intercessor. And within this reading, we see a description of the working of the Trinity: the Spirit helps us to pray when we are overcome; God the Creator is for us when all else seems to be arrayed against us and everything seems to be conspiring to break our spirits; the Son, Jesus Christ, has died for us and intercedes for us when we cannot intercede for ourselves.”
“As I watched the children, my mind drifted to Jesus, and how he might have played as a child. How little we know about his world prior to the age of 30. And yet, this Son of God, Son of Man, this child of heaven, I am certain on lazy summer days would have jumped into sprays of water, or pulled buckets from wells to toss water onto the head of his cousin John, or splashed in the shallows of the Sea of Galilee with his siblings. Do I hear Joseph, do I see Mary, at first telling the boys to slow down? To be careful? Not to disturb the others at the well, the women and men fishing the Sea? Relenting, and laughing, now they start splashing water at Jesus rather than chide him.”
I hear you calling to me – come and rest.
I hear you speaking my name – you are my beloved.
I hear you welcoming me – “come to me, all you who are weary and burdened.” (Mt. 11: 28, NIV)
The Archbishop of Canterbury enshrines the principle that anyone opposed to the women in the priesthood is ensured their consecrators hold the same belief.