“Like Hildegard of Bingen, Mechtild’s visions, although welcomed by the church at first, eventually faced threat of censure – not because of their erotic nature, but probably because some of her visions didn’t have very complementary things to say about the ecclesiastical power structure.”
“‘Why is he talking to her?’
they must have thought.
‘Does he not hear Jairus
begging, pleading, bargaining?
Does he not know who he is?'”
““These are strange days!”
yells someone in the crowd.
I can assure you, friend,
that no one has had a stranger day than me.”
A reflection on John 16:1-15 Daily Office Readings for Friday, April 9, 2021: AM Psalm 136; PM Psalm 118; Dan. 12:1-4,13; Acts 4:1-12 / 1 Cor. 15:51-58;
‘One of the things we are all being asked to do in the Episcopal Church, as we get more in touch with the systemic racism that permeates America and American Christianity, is to open our eyes to the “traces of the trade”–the remnants of how the injustices of slavery and racism still linger almost imperceptibly in our American fabric. Decades ago, Martin Luther King remarked that “It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.”’
“Of particular importance to Episcopalians, he is an index ancestor in the story of Anglican Christianity. Gregory first encountered people from the British isles as slaves being sold at the Roman slave market. He was incredibly struck by their pale skin and fine facial features, and likened them to angels.”
“What’s probably lost on us, though, as we read this passage, is that “a scene at the well” was a well known plot device of storytellers of the Middle East, including ancient Hebrew stories. Listeners at the time expected stories of encounters of men and women at wells to be betrothal stories, much in the same way we expect the typical encounter in a romantic comedy to be a meeting where the main female character can’t stand the guy, but will later fall for him.”
“Sometimes, though, studying and serving can have difficult consequences. Although Andrews played a premier role in the beginning steps of Indian independence, there came a time that Gandhi, the teacher, had to tell Andrews that it was time for him to step aside and leave the rest of the struggle to Indians.”
“Only now can the writer begin the gilding, which the iconographer breathes as much as applies it, much like the breath of God breathed life into humankind.”
“This pandemic, hard as it has been in so many ways, has revealed something we tended not to think about before the pandemic–the Church has never stopped fermenting.”