“I need to look at people and groups in much the same way. No matter how different they may appear, each person is a child of God, created to live in other places and ways, yet with value beyond what we may see. Like the wrack at the beach or colors of paint, the beauty and usefulness are in the diversity, just as God planned it.”
‘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.”’
‘So, also, we are reminded in a recent Lenten gospel that the solitary grain of wheat must fall to the ground and be buried before it can bring forth fruit. Otherwise, it remains a single grain—the original Greek here actually says, “Remains alone.”’
Crocuses purple the lawn in Lenten array.
Surrounded by dead, dry leaves of last year, they
insist upon spring, despite the morning frost.
My prayer is ice –
How long, O Lord?
“Listen, listen
open your arms
extend your hands
feel the gifts of this moment
new life all around”
‘ “Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don’t’ have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”’
– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“And when Jesus quoted Isaiah, who wrote that all shall be taught of God, he likewise meant all. And, get this: I think when Jesus called God father, he may have envisioned God as rabbi, teacher and parent as one. Pouring honey across slate, so you can learn to love, and love to learn.”
“So, as a follower of Jesus I am doomed to be, again and again, that little seed that falls into the ground and dies. As I open myself to the stranger, to all the oppressed, and to the ways humans are changing the planet, my self-understanding will need to be reformed again and again.”
“Do “Hate Crimes” act as “Love Acts” by those who perpetrate them? Do they actually “love” their own group so much that they have to preach against others to prove they love their group more?”
“But what we actually desire from a friend isn’t to be purged of the undesirable parts of ourselves. What we truly desire is to be accepted and loved; and this same desire shows itself in the actual longings of the psalmist.”