Poor Thomas. He’s gotten such a bad name for nothing more than asking for reasonable verification. We might think of him as the Gospel’s first empirical scientist, and yet he’s come to be known as the doubter. That’s because subheadings in the Bible—added rather recently by translators and publishers—are interpretive. For good or ill, they … Read the rest
Continue reading "The Commissioning of the Wounded" »Easter Vigil 2019
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I do not long for resurrection. I am generally much more comfortable with death staying in its predictable tomb. And I’m pretty sure that same sentiment was true of the spice-bearing women who came to anoint the body of Jesus on a Sunday morning so very many years ago. They knew what to do … Read the rest
What do you really desire? I confess that I often don’t know. And even when I think I do know what I want, it turns out to be something quite unholy like a pint of Salt & Straw ice cream. So I find myself saying, like the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans, … Read the rest
Continue reading "The Discipline of Deeper Desire" »
Our own Honorary Canon Jim Bethell recently told me a story about visiting a crematorium and peering through the peephole that allowed him to see a human body in the process of becoming ash. His main takeaway was surprise. The body was luminous, he said. The process seemed to generate more of a glow than … Read the rest
Continue reading "Why Not Become Fire?" »
On Thursday I posted a complaint on social media that I was late in preparing my sermon. When I’m preaching I try really hard to be ready before my husband John comes home from San Francisco, because I like to save weekends for him. But this wasn’t that kind of week—everything seemed to take more time … Read the rest
Continue reading "Eye to Eye" »
If you’ve been around Trinity for a while, you may already know that my husband John and I served for seven years as missionaries in Central America and the Caribbean when we were newly married. Por eso somos hablahispanos. That’s why we’re both Spanish speakers. What you may not know is that our two sons … Read the rest
Continue reading "Light for the Journey" »
The stakes were high in Jerusalem: Jesus was within a few days of his betrayal and death, and—as Mark records it, his teaching in the Temple had become very succinct. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your … Read the rest
Continue reading "Wholehearted Sacrifice" »Several decades ago, at a time when I was thinking very deeply about God and money, I went to my then Presbyterian pastor and asked her what to do. “What’s the right amount to give to the church?” I wanted to know. Should it be a tithe, a tenth of my income? That seemed like … Read the rest
Continue reading "The Look of Love" »For almost 20 years, my husband John and I lived in a CoHousing community in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are several CoHousing communities in the Portland metro area, so perhaps you have heard of them or even lived in one yourself. But in case the CoHousing concept is new to you, let me … Read the rest
Continue reading "Love Thy Neighborhood" »
It was about this time last year, when I was on the search for air conditioned outings—as one does in the summer in Portland—that I found myself at the Pompeii exhibit at OMSI. Perhaps some of you visited it as well? It was a breathtaking installation, at once intimate and cosmic in scale. There were … Read the rest
Continue reading "Cloudy Insight" »
