A moment in the Communion service has fired my imagination for the past three years. Then shall the Priest say to them that come to receive the holy Communion, Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbours, and intend to lead a new…
(657 – 684) Ashamed to be without a song to shareWith men more talented apparently,The herdsman left the monks in revelryAnd went to sleep with creatures in his care. That very night he was commanded inA dream to sing of how the world began;At first he balked and said, “I doubt I can,”But inspiration led…
Take This Cup: How God Transforms Suffering into Glory and Joy. By Charles Erlandson. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2020. 216 pp. $46 (cloth); $26 (paper). Suffering, as Charles Erlandson observes, is the only universal human experience. Given that suffering is additionally “so heavy, so painful, [and] so destructive” (1), it is unsurprising that so…
When the ink printed on paperfeels rigid, sterile,we can close our eyes,lean in, and empty our breath.That’s when the letters separate, rise,dance in the air like leavesflittering as they fall. We collect what we can,rub them across our skin,swallow them whole and feelthem warm inside of us.The ones we miss formkite strings across the skyas…
Anglicans are often proud of the central place of scripture in prayer book worship, especially the lectionaries, those scheduled scripture readings for the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer and the Eucharist. Certainly, it is true that a widening diversity of calendars and lectionaries across the Anglican world are limiting claims about uniformity of…
The Second Part of the Homily of the Place and Time of Prayer It hath been declared unto you, good Christian people, in the former Sermon read unto you, at what time and into what place ye shall come together to praise God. Now I entend to set before your eyes, first, how zealous and…
I knew him long ago—even at first, I sensed that he was the center of his world, and that he expected all good things to come to him. You see, he made stories out of words, and he knew what was supposed to happen. You were to happen to him. You were to come to…
An Homily of the Place and Time of Prayer God, through his almighty power, wisdom, and goodness, created in the beginning heaven and earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the earth, the fishes in the sea, and all other creatures, for the use and commodity of…
I remember teaching a university church history course when an astute student remarked that in times of cultural change, history “gallops” in a way noticeably different from its usual snail’s pace. The strident and swift changes brought to American culture recently are noticeable symptoms of aggressive and visible secularism that seeks to undermine traditional orthodox…
The story is that men are getting softer.They break down sobbing, hide a face beneathA towel, after they’ve been benched, as ifA private room of terry cloth could shutOut our contempt. They say that some men areAfraid to lift a phone, to call the drug storeAnd ask the hours of the pharmacy.They’ll sit there, sunk…