Seeking Authentic Voice

Our readings this morning in Isaiah and in the Gospel of Luke appear to be sounding a warning. Look out! The times they are a-changing! But let’s remember that these readings appear every three years and were not designated specifically for today as a response to this presidential election or the times we live in. We are not to read into them more than they are. They are the end of a three year cycle of Bible readings which all combined give us a portrait of what it means to be a people of God and how we are to live as a beloved community, the kingdom of God come near. . Isaiah is a prophet who lived about 2600 years ago. Isaiah lived during a time of great turmoil for the Hebrew people. The people were divided and cynical about their future. There was hardship and their lives were difficult. Into this state of despair, Isaiah reminds the people that God is with them. God will turn their heartache into grace, their challenges into new life. Isaiah prophesy’s “Before they call...

Saints have always been part of my faith reality, in large part because as a child I attended the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The Christian tradition defines saints as people who are more like Jesus than the rest of us, which means they are almost perfect and they perform miracles. The Episcopal Church has a huge book on the saints we recognize and we celebrate one every Tuesday at the weekday Eucharist.  As a child I wondered what kind of person was so perfect in their faith that they could perform miracles like Jesus did. As an adult I’ve come to realize that being perfect is not the goal and miracles are in the eye of the beholder. I take comfort in Richard Rohr’s saying: “We come to God much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right.” The disciple Peter, for example, is a less than perfect saint. He defended his love of Jesus, but then at a critical moment Peter ran away and denied he knew Jesus. Jesus called this broken man “the rock” upon which the...

Like other bloggers on the RevGalBlogPal site, I was thrilled to catch the invitation to read and review the Common English Women's Bible. As an Episcopal priest I tend to use the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible and am fond of the Oxford Annotated edition, which I purchased while in seminary. As a woman and a priest I have struggled with the dominant male voice in the church, often at the complete exclusion of female voices. So, over the years I have actively sought out all resources and Bible commentaries by women and from a woman's perspective. Thus I was immediately drawn to review this Bible, and have high hopes for its translation, its accuracy and clarity. I am also hopeful that this interpretation will provide new insight into well known texts by lifting up women's stories which may otherwise lie in more obscure positions in the Biblical text.  Due to some sort of shipping glitch I did not receive the CEB until a few days ago. Unlike some who have had t...

It’s been said that as Christians we are to live with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Meaning, we are to stay current with the world around us and define our role and response to the world through our faith. Lately, as a priest, every aspect of my life, from clergy colleagues to Facebook, blogs, and other social media, from newspaper articles, to books I should be reading and books I am reading, to diocesan convention and other diocesan workshops, to my own personal reality as one who was a kid in the 1960’s and in college in the 1970’s, all around me, all the time, there exists an urgency to reconcile racism and diversity. Recently I listened to an interview from “On Being” with Krista Tippett, who was speaking with Ruby Sales. (First broadcast on September 15, 2016). Ruby is known as a “public theologian,” she’s a civil rights activist from the 1960’s, working to make meaning out of the world we live in and reconcile our lives with a loving God who c...

I’m knitting a lot these days because, as you know, I have a granddaughter on the way. Currently I’m working on a sweater using a pattern I used a few years ago to make sweaters for my goddaughters, who were 5 at the time. This time I’m knitting the pattern in a size for a newborn. Unfortunately I don’t have the correct size needles so I had to recalculate the pattern, adjusting it to accommodate the yarn I’m using. The first time I started to knit this sweater I realized it was going to be too big for a newborn, so I ripped it out, reduced the number of stitches,  and started again. A few days later I was about half way finished when I realized that I had misread the pattern and made a serious mistake. The kind of mistake that could not be fixed. The only thing I could do was rip it out and start again. In the meantime I came down with this cold - this mind numbing, stop all movement and rest crud - that totally incapacitated me. Somehow in my head congested haze I thought I coul...

Growing up in Salt Lake City, the child of Mormon pioneers, faith was the bedrock of my life. Some of my family members were active practicing Mormons, my paternal grandfather was a high priest in the church and my uncles went on missionary trips. They practiced, among other teachings of the church, that our bodies are temples. As temples, our bodies are a gift from God and are to be treated with utmost dignity and respect. Therefore they never drank alcohol or any caffeinated beverage, and never smoked cigarettes.  Other family members stopped practicing their faith. These members drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, and drank alcohol, frequently in excess.  One side my family taught me the rules of our faith, which guaranteed my salvation. The other side of my family taught me that faith was irrelevant. Many aspects of my childhood were confusing and sad, so perhaps for this  reason I developed my own sense of faith and a prayer life that lead me to feel close to God....

Saturday, in the midst of sermon writing and Sunday morning preparations, a parishioner showed up at my door. I live in the Rectory which is on church property, but it is unusual for parishioners to come to the door without being invited. I was on my way out to walk my dogs, so I met the parishioner outside. She told me that we have a rabbit in the community garden. This might not seem unusual, a rabbit in a garden. However, a couple of years ago we installed a high fence including a rabbit guard and we haven't had many critters in the garden since. We wondered if the rabbit had somehow snuck in when someone left the gate open? We decided to open the gate and let the rabbit out. Later, after my walk, I saw the rabbit outside the garden, nibbling on grass. I presumed it would find its way home. However, Sunday morning the rabbit was in front of the church, eating grass. That was when I was certain that this rabbit was not wild, but a pet that someone had abandoned in the garden. Wit...