It has been interesting for me to note, even from a couple thousand miles away, the differences that have been taking place at St. Stephen’s. I’m thinking specifically about the chancel at St. Stephen’s: if I’m not mistaken, I saw two new lamps, one on each side of the altar. I smiled and thought to myself, Well, that sure dresses up the chancel just a bit. And then I looked again and thought, Are those new paraments? Pretty spiffy! Something new. New lights and new paraments

What does it mean to be restored? If you happen to ask Google you will be told that restore means to bring back (a previous right, practice, custom, or situation); to be reinstated. I would say that it means to be brought back to wholeness. One of the themes of Mark’s Gospel is that of restoration – and the text for this coming Sunday is truly a text about restoration. We hear about the healing of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with a flow of blood (or the hemorrhaging woman)

I love puzzles. Crosswords, sudoku, logic, and math puzzles are examples. I love packing our travel luggage and the peripheral items that will accompany us on a trip into the back end of the minivan in just the right way so everything will fit and nothing will fly around if we have to make a sudden stop. I love to take something apart to see how it works and then put it all back together usually without a manual with how-to instructions, and often times with success. So, I co

"Ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In the Lord’s hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all humankind." (Job 12:7-10) What does it mean to be a good steward of creation? It means that you/we take a hard look at how we treat the world around us. God has g

I found myself thinking about Dorothy Sayers this morning. “About whom?” you might ask. Allow me to introduce you. Dorothy Sayers: mid-twentieth century British scholar. She translated Dante’s Divine Comedy. I see you rolling your eyes. But she was also one of the “Inklings,” a writing group that included C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) and J. R. R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings). She wrote theology with the same seriousness and competence as Lewis. But she also wrote delightf