On this Third Sunday of Advent, we mark our third significant Saint’s Feast Day in Advent, the Feast of Saint Lucy or Lucia. Like her contemporary Saint Nicholas, Saint Lucia marks a consequential shift from the early, persecuted church to the landed, establishment church of the early Middle Ages. The
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One of the pandemic’s most ravaging larcenies is depriving us of shared musical experiences, and not in some furtive, pilfering manner either. From concerts to live theater, from choirs to festivals, from hymn sing to children’s’ holiday performances, it seems COVID’s singular objective is to deprive us wholesale of moments
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Okay, yeah, I’ll admit it. I didn’t want to go see it, could’ve cared less about their music when they were global superstars, waaay too many Broadway attempts to resurrect aging rock hipsters from previous decades, but, “rush” cut-rate tickets, seats on the first row, can see the large piano
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The theme of our second Advent candle, and pervading this entire week, is Peace. The very words sound comforting in their native tongues, Shalom in Hebrew, Eirene in Greek (from which we derive the English name “Irene”). Used almost 250 times throughout Holy Scripture, our English term struggles to contain
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We are reflecting together in this brief, intense Advent season on the poignant Advent Sunday Collects. So constitutive, so incisive, so formative for our spiritual (and not so spiritual for that matter) walk though Advent. The Collects waste no time in their laconic cross-examination and lacing indictment of the human
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Undergirding our weekly Sunday Advent themes are several implicit, transcendent Christian cornerstone experiences. In Advent, as God’s future comes graciously towards us and into view, we are called, literally, to wait. To receive God’s gifting on God’s terms in God’s good time. There is a profound historical tension here, as
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As we move into this second week of Advent, we pause for what has become a civic version of a saint’s day. Sadly, like so many of our national days, this day marks a tragic and traumatic 80th anniversary. In the early morning of Sunday, December 7th, 1941, aircraft from
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Today is the second of our significant holiday Saints Day’s, the Feast of Saint Nicholas of Myra. Nicholas is an early church rock star in the Orthodox Christian tradition, consequential for all Christians although he is particularly venerated as the patron saint of children, sailors, archers and prostitutes among others.
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So it turns out that one of the oldest, most well attested and most globally evidenced holiday traditions involves that wreath on the table, wall or door. Ancient Greeks made them from bay and cherry laurel leaves to award Olympiad victors in the Hellenic athletic contests of antiquity. Ancient Persians
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Growing up in the Episcopal Church means being wrapped in the warm blanket of Anglican liturgical tradition, all based upon not only the Word of God but also lots of…words. The Prayer Book tradition is inescapably literary, which any old-school Anglican soul knows isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It kinda
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