Weekly essays inspired by Anglican themes and theology.
Vol. 57 No. 4 The Fourth Sunday in Advent December 21, 2025 Christmas Communions: Baptized Christians admitted to Communion should receive the sacrament on Christmas (Dec. 24 at 5 p.m. or 11 p.m.; Dec. 25 at 11 a.m.) or on the days following. (Dec. 26 at noon; Dec. 27 at 11 a.m. and Dec. 28 at…
Vol. 57 No. 3 The Third Sunday in Advent December 14, 2025 The Nicene Creed begins with the confession of Israel’s faith in “one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible”. Pagan religions confused the natural with the divine, the many with the one: the scriptures of…
Vol. 57 No. 2 The Second Sunday in Advent December 7, 2025 I cringe when westerners trying to be respectful of non-Christian religions refer to them as “faiths” or “creeds”. They don’t seem to realize it is a very Christian way of talking about religion. Judaism might be described as a ritual and moral “law”, Taoism…
Vol. 57 No. 1 The First Sunday in Advent November 30, 2025 An Annual Congregational Meeting is an opportunity to review the state of the parish, and much of this is necessarily concerned with reports on finances, buildings, attendance, and programming. But it is also an opportunity for us to remind ourselves of our larger purpose,…
One of our more agreeable habits at St John’s is an Annual Meeting that accomplishes necessary business in a businesslike fashion. This year was no exception. With Graham Sadler, the Senior Warden, in the chair, concise yet pithy reports were received concerning finances, property, and stewardship; a slate of new Vestrymen was elected; the clergy…
Reprinted from February 2018. The clergy, you know, can say some uncommonly foolish things. (I plead guilty). So I will not name the dignitary who, some years ago, opined at a clergy gathering that confession of sin made people judgmental. Though a murmur of reverent assent ran through the room, I refrained from asking the…
All Saints Day is past, but its themes linger in this final month of the church year. On the one side, there is what I would call its earthly aspect, all too familiar to us, of grief and loss, of mortal frailty, and our prayer for God’s mercy. That’s why, when we commemorate all souls…
Visiting the celebrated Uffizi galleries in Florence is an ordeal. They have been sucked into the dark hole of bucket-list-driven mass tourism, and the opportunity to contemplate their celebrated collections requires teeth-gritted determination. Yet even in the Uffizi there are nooks and crannies that are but lightly affected by the crowds, and one of them…
Music at Madison Square Sunday was the inaugural concert of Music at Madison Square, and the Organist-Choirmaster William Douglas and the supporters of The Aquila Music Foundation (many of them parishioners) are to be congratulated for an auspicious beginning to what promises to be a varied series of musical events of a high order. The autumnal-themed…
Sunday mornings: what we could be doing with them instead of going to church! There is, of course, the allure of the golf course (to which I am immune), or for sedentary folks like me there could be a leisurely breakfast of coffee, eggs, crisp bacon, bitter marmalade, buttered toast, and a large metropolitan newspaper with a hefty book reviews and arts sections (do such things still exist? I am a bit oldschool in my ideas of allurement).
Reprinted from September 2019. Many Christians in North America worship in buildings that are intentionally “unchurchy” in character – anonymous, generic spaces similar in style (or lack of style) to stores, offices, and movie theatres. The idea is to eliminate any possible impediment to the visitor, to make the transition from casual consumer culture to…
Revised and reprinted from 2020. There is a small colony of ants near the rectory bathroom windowsill. When I leave a drop of toothpaste foam near the sink, they form a little column of anxious diligence, scurrying back and forth to claim this doubtful treasure. Along with the cats in the house, they remind me…
