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 […]

Lost in Wonder

Readings for Easter Sunday (Year C) This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on April 20, 2025. Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia! Happy Easter, everyone! Today we celebrate the mystery and miracle at the heart of our Christian faith, a mystery that fills us with hope and joy […]

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, […]

The Interior Castle Distilled: “Caterpillar Soup”

Readings for the Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany – Year C This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church Eureka on Sunday February 23, 2025. Over the last seven weeks, several of us have been gathering in the Pierson Room to discuss our reading of The Interior Castle, a spiritual classic written by 16th century Spanish mystic, Teresa […]