Welcome to Advent! The first breath of the new church year is about to be drawn. Once more, we’ve circled around to the season of mystery, into “the close and holy darkness,” as the poet Dylan Thomas put it. Advent is laden with expectation, pregnant with strange good news, and lit by archetypal symbols. I loved this season during my …
Stir Up, We Beseech Thee
When I was semi-serious about marathon running, it was all-consuming. Running up to 70 miles in a week takes a lot of time. But it’s not just the running itself. Running told me what to eat. Running told me when to sleep and how much. Running told me what to do at night. Running organized my life; it was the …
Signs of the Times
Those who know me know I love a good apocalypse. That means this is my favorite time of the liturgical year. As we slide into Advent, the lectionary turns to signs and warnings of the inevitable end. Not really what we have come to expect as retailers have for weeks told us it is Christmas time. As much as we …
All Saints, All Souls
The fun and frolic of Halloween is over for the year, with empty candy wrappers and well-worn costumes set aside as evidence of the revelry. Our friend Stephanie Wyatt used to remind me that when changes are happening and people are scared, we like to throw parties. It’s a way of trying to embrace the mystery rather than run from …
The Holy Ones: St. Your Name Here
One thing I love about Church in the Cliff is that the conversational format allows for dissent and dialogue. As soon as we began our series on saints, questions were raised: “Isn’t canonization really a political process?” “Is anyone really a saint?” “Aren’t we all saints?” Another thing I love about Church in the Cliff is that everyone came along …
A Hoping Machine, a Working Machine: St. Woody Guthrie
If Bayard Rustin is the architect of the progressive movement in America, perhaps Woody Guthrie is the soundtrack. He seems to be rediscovered as each generation finds itself, once again, in lean times. Then he is forgotten when people forget that hard times can happen to them, too. Woody always remembered because he lived it. Although he started life in …
Changing Change: Saint Bayard Rustin
Today, as I write this, it is National Coming Out Day. It is fitting, then, that this week we will canonize Bayard Rustin. He was, in many ways, the architect of the 20th century American protest movement. In 1942, thirteen years before Rosa Parks, he refused to move to the back of a Louisville-to-Nashville bus. He was arrested and beaten, …
St. Francis: To Walk in Jesus’ Footsteps
Let me start by admitting that I know little about our selection for this week’s saint: St. Francis of Assisi. I have an image of him, but I think I get him confused with Snow White. But as I read the Wikipedia article on him, I found some bits of information tucked away in the recesses of my shabby memory. …
The Decisive Moment
Since this is the last in our mini-series on the cross, I might as well lay my cards on the table. This view is offered not as a final answer, but as an opportunity for further questions. Ultimately, I think the cross is just that – an opportunity for more questions. The theologian Schubert Ogden describes Christ as the decisive …
The Scandal of the Cross
It seems that the people of the Jesus Movement expected something else. Maybe a violent overthrow of their Roman oppressors. Maybe just a living wage and single-payer health care. A chicken in every pot. Maybe they just wanted someone, one of their own, to say that he understood and to speak for them and fight for them. But it didn’t …