Finding Your Soul by David Anderson
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No Explanation Necessary
My sermon was very short this morning. I read two poems—two excerpts, actually. After hearing the long Lucan story of the nativity on Christmas Eve—with angels and shepherds and barns and tax registrations and long journeys into night—this morning we heard John’s story of the nativity. It’s an elegant, poetic eight words. “The Word became…
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God’s Christmas Kiss
It is Christmas Eve, the night when God comes for us, comes in the only way we could receive God-with-us. If the infinite God is to reach us finite humans, there will have to be some translation, some accommodation. And all the work will have to be on God’s part. There is an affecting story,…
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Luminous Darkness
Last night I hosted the staff Christmas party here at the rectory. In preparing our home for the festivities—which always includes a raucous round of Yankee Swap—I lit all the candles in the living room. Because the room is large and has no ceiling light fixture, we have a number of lamps scattered around. But…
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“I Expect Him Today”
Advent pulls in two directions. It recalls a “first coming” but only to awaken our senses so that we will not miss the “second coming.” I don’t go in much for the Second Coming. That’s almost completely because as a child I was taught to look for the Second Coming in literal form. Christ would…
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Waiting for the Bus
I am sitting at a bus stop in Hellertown, Pennsylvania. I am not the one hoping to board a bus, it is my son-in-law, Andy. Andy and Maggy have come out to our home in Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. Today, though, it is time to head back to New York. Maggy is staying the day since…
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Make Your Vessel Small
Thanksgiving is always about bounty, cornucopia, an overflowing with excess. Yet many of us are not feeling cornucopian these days. For some few at the top the bounty is flowing, but the rest of us are still struggling. We’re not feeling the Thanksgiving. In the gospels Jesus tells us, “Do not worry about your life,…
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Walk on Water? No Thanks.
It is easy to allow our spiritual quest to lead us into self-gratification. It has always been the perennial problem associated with “spiritual growth.” This story is told of the sage Ramakrishna. Once a man came to Ramakrishna, sitting on the banks of the Ganges. “Master,” he called to Ramakrishna, “Look! After fourteen years of…
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Breathing with Brother Ronald
Poosh goes the little oxygen tank. Every three seconds, a little burst of air forced through the clear plastic tubes running around his ears and under his nose. I am sitting in the chapel of Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, New York. After the long chanting of Psalms we rest in silence. That’s when…
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Thinking Big Enough
“If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.” -Wes Jackson Those words gave me pause—a big pause. I read them in an article about sustainable agriculture (as a South Dakota native it’s sad to see the systematic poisoning of the earth as the basis for our agri-business). Wes…