Leftover Halloween candy languishes in its plastic pumpkin on top of the refrigerator; for the moment, the kids are satiated and I’m being good.  All the sugar brings to mind a favorite hymn, “Jesus, the very thought of thee,” a few stanzas of which are here:

Jesus, the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills the breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest.

Nor voice can sing, nor heart can frame,
Nor can the memory find
A sweeter sound than Thy blest Name,
O Savior of mankind!

O Jesus, King most wonderful
Thou Conqueror renowned,
Thou sweetness most ineffable
In Whom all joys are found!

Celestial Sweetness unalloyed,
Who eat Thee hunger still;
Who drink of Thee still feel a void
Which only Thou canst fill.

O most sweet Jesus, hear the sighs
Which unto Thee we send;
To Thee our inmost spirit cries;
To Thee our prayers ascend.

The original Latin text is by Bernard of Clairvaux,  the great religious writer and reformer of…

Many years ago when I was working in New York I found myself on a bus with a friend, arguing about religion.  We had known each other since we were children in Hawaii; she was an atheist, or maybe an agnostic (I was never really sure), I was Roman Catholic, and religion had always been a strange area of silence and even strain between us, one of the few things we rarely talked about during slumber parties or after-school walks to the ice cream store.  And now here we were in our twenties, living in New York, starting our adult lives, and she wanted to know why I still went to church every Sunday.  I felt curiously shy and inarticulate, trying to talk about my faith in front of this person I had known for most of my life.

Image courtesy of bbc.co.uk/radio4

But she continued to push, asking me to explain…

Ronald Knox, born into an Anglican family in Leicestershire, England,  converted to the Roman Catholic faith in 1917, four years after being ordained in the Church of England. Two years later he was ordained a Catholic priest.

He soon found his new church didn’t know quite what to do with him or other converts like him. He famously observed:

“We’re like a bird who has got into a room where there is a cocktail party. Everyone is delighted we’re there, but no one knows what to do with us.”

Not much has changed since then, or so I would have said before hearing the recent news about the Anglican Apostolic Constitution.

Just last month, in fact, the National Catholic Register offered an article titled The Convert Clergy Conundrum. Telling the story of “Tom,” a former minister — whose story is a compilation of  various Christian ministers/priests who crossed the Tiber — the article begins,

…..He…

The Bible is a storybook.  Basically, it is a love story between God and humanity; a story of a covenant made, broken, and renewed, again and again. [...] We need to enlarge our grasp of this love story–to learn it more completely, to understand it more deeply, to possess it more personally, and to live it more fully.  This is a lifelong task.

This is one of my favorite passages from the book Living Faithfully as a Prayer Book People by Episcopal priest and Christian educator John H. Westerhoff.  It gets at both how I read the Bible and how I approach Christian formation and education.  I think that the stories of the Bible as stories are more important than any propositional statements we can make about them, and are both more compelling and more necessary than any lesson or  “moral” we can draw from them.

Image courtesy of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Menlo…

Supreme Court credit:Courant

Twenty five years ago when a handful of St. Louis women gathered to publicly defend Catholic Church teaching, the immediate topics were feminism, abortion and women’s ordination. Within a couple of months and many enthusiastic letters from faithful Catholic women, we understood a national organization was in the making, Women for Faith & Family:

WFF Beginnings
In September 1984, six St. Louis women gathered around a dining room table to discuss their concern that the US bishops, who had announced their intention to write a pastoral letter on the subject of “women’s concerns”, might not receive an accurate picture of Catholic women. The women were concerned about the impression given in the media that most Catholic women feel “alienated” from the Church, and dissent from Church teachings on issues ranging from abortion to ordination. They were aware that feminist theology had influenced many women and Catholic leaders. They wanted to…

Duccio's Temptation of Jesus from the Frick Collection; image courtesy of At the Edge of the Enclosure

I was at a dinner party once listening to a woman discuss her family’s preparations for Lent.  She talked about how the family got together for a meeting and discussed what their Lenten observances would be and how they could support one another’s choices.  I was about to interrupt, eager to commend my friend for her family’s seriousness and piety, when she continued:  “My husband always gives up desserts, and you know he loses six or seven pounds every time.  It’s just so great!”

I decided to hold my tongue.

Lent is almost over and it hasn’t been a major topic of discussion on this blog, so I thought I’d throw it out there for your consideration.  If you’re a Christian, is Lent a meaningful time of year for you?  Do you follow customs you learned…

The Right Reverend George Wayne Smith, Bishop of Missouri

Growing up in Hawaii (and for a couple of years before that in the western Pacific region of Micronesia) I learned to think of “missionary” as a dirty word.  My childhood experiences taught me to understand mission primarily as the thing that well-meaning but clueless people did when they were sent off to convert the natives, an enterprise that all too often ended up destroying the indigenous culture in the process.

My understanding of mission has evolved in recent years, so that I now think of it more in terms of social justice, but social justice always rooted in the Gospel and especially the message and work of reconciliation.  In the first chapter of Mark, Jesus gains a lot of attention as he travels through Galilee, healing people and performing exorcisms.  But while the people are focused on these miraculous doings, Jesus tells…

A friend of mine sent me a link to an article about the Archbishop of Canterbury, with the assurance that it is not a story from the satirical news source The Onion.  The headline reads: “Archbishop calls for more praying in churches.”

I had to laugh, and to give thanks to God yet again for the good (reverend) doctor.  More than just about any contemporary theologian I can think of, Rowan Williams understands what it is that ails Christianity today.  Better yet, he understands that the cure is nothing new, nothing fancy, nothing that costs money.  The cure is the tradition itself: prayer, study, worship.  The cure is to focus on our own spiritual health, and as part of that focus to start engaging in the disciplines our faith requires, disciplines that inevitably lead us to seeing the face of God in our neighbor.

It’s simple stuff, but simple stuff that is…

Photo of Bishop Robinson courtesy of the BBC

I received an email about this and went onto Episcopal Cafe to check it out, where I learned it’s all over the Internet. The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire, will give the invocation at the opening event of the Inaugural Week activities on Sunday, January 18, at the Lincoln Memorial. Part of an email reportedly sent out by Bishop Robinson states:

It will be an enormous honor to offer prayers for the country and the new president, standing on the holy ground where the “I have a dream speech” was delivered by Dr. King, surrounded by the inspiring and reconciling words of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It is also an indication of the new president’s commitment to being the President of ALL the people. I am humbled and overjoyed at this invitation, and it will be my great honor to be there…