You Are Not a Brick, But a Newborn Bard of the Holy Ghost

Readings for Pentecost Sunday (Year C) This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on June 8, 2025. Today we feel the wind beneath our wingsToday the hidden fountain flows and playsToday the church draws breath at last and singsAs every flame becomes a Tongue of praise.This is the feast of fire, air, and […]

Transforming Wounds into Glory

Readings for the Fifth Sunday of Easter (Year C) This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on May 18, 2025. This last week, I led a retreat on Spiritual Friendship for clergy at the Bishop’s Ranch in Healdsburg. We read aloud my distillation of the medieval classic Spiritual Friendship by St. Aelred of […]

The Lamb Who Makes Shepherd out of SHeep

Readings for the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Year C) – Good Shepherd Sunday & Mother’s Day This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on May 11, 2025. Happy Mother’s Day and Happy Good Shepherd Sunday! It’s not all that uncommon for these two holidays to coincide; and I love it when they do […]

Breakfast with Jesus

Readings for the Third Sunday of Easter (Year C) This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on May 4, 2025. A colleague of mine who taught graduate courses in theology said that Christian Spirituality is essentially a question; and that question is, “Do you love me?” It’s the question that Christ is asking […]

Invitation to Generosity and Passiontide

Readings for the Fifth Sunday in Lent (Year C) This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on April 6, 2025. In today’s Gospel, Mary of Bethany prays with her whole body, arousing multiple senses, and leaning into the earthy dirtiness of everyday life. She pours a pound of pure nard all over Jesus’s […]

The Arborist’s Tender Care

Readings for the Third Sunday in Lent (Year C) This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on March 23, 2025. Our readings for this Third Sunday in Lent explore the mystery of suffering in a world that we believe was created, according to the Nicene Creed, by God “the Father Almighty,” a phrase […]

St. Patrick, Herod, and Pontius Pilate

Readings for the Second Sunday in Lent (Year C) This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on March 16, 2025. About fifty years after the 318 bishops gathered for the first ecumenical council and adopted the Nicene Creed, a teenage boy in Britain named Maewyn Sucat was kidnapped by Irish pirates and sold […]

The Devil can Cite Scripture for his Purpose

Readings for the First Sunday in Lent (Year C) This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on March 9, 2025. So, our Lenten journey has begun once again; our Lenten fast in preparation for the great Feast of the Resurrection; our 40 days of delayed gratification. And here at Christ Church, we will […]

“Francis of Assisi” by Hermann Hesse – Prologue

I discovered that one of my favorite authors, Hermann Hesse, wrote a novella about one of my favorite saints, Francis of Assisi, and it’s never been translated into English. Using the original German version and an Italian translation, I have been slowly translating the novella Franz von Assisi (1904), with the help of AI. This […]

Compassion, ash, and DAsh

Readings for Ash Wednesday Isaiah 58:1-12 Psalm 103 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 This homily was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025. “For he himself knows whereof we are made; he remembers that we are but dust.” Ash Wednesday often falls around my birthday. During my first year here, […]