I am delighted to be celebrating the Feast day of Luke the Evangelist. You see, Luke and I have been traveling closely lately. Along with the fact that it is his turn in the lectionary, I’m also currently writing a curriculum for the families at my school studying his gospel.
A priest friend once confessed to me that he had been years out of seminary before he realized that, throughout his life, he had spent all of his time talking about God rather than to God. He had been excited by the idea of God, by all the accoutrements around worship, and by the call to justice. In all his excitement, it took some time before he realized that he had missed the central piece.
While in college, one of the best parts about my summertime subway commute to work was the 50 minutes of uninterrupted reading it afforded me every day. To stave off any potential conversations, I always boarded the train with my book in hand, head down.
Anyone who visits our house might guess at why we love Saint Francis of Assisi, known for his love of animals.
In America, we use angels to sell pretty good toilet paper and terrible lingerie. We’re not much for the six-winged terror holding a burning coal to the prophet’s lips (Isaiah 6:2-7). We prefer fat cherubs with harps to sentinels with spinning, flaming swords (Genesis 3:24). Our angels aren’t divine messengers, and they don’t start their sentences with, “Fear not!” They are boring and uncool.
It happens often when we are in church: at the time of the children’s sermon, my daughter is nowhere to be found.
I went to seminary as a single, young woman in my mid-twenties after living overseas in Tanzania for three years.
Today, we honor the feast day of Hildegard of Bingen, a twelfth-century Benedictine abbess who was not elevated to sainthood until 2012. She was a prolific writer and composer, leaving us dozens of songs and poems, and nine books, including works on medicine and pharmacology.
The words “Martyrs” and “Memphis” at first glance might seem to be an odd pairing. We think of martyrs as biblical, ancient, and abroad, and Memphis as relatively young from a world history standpoint—a place for good BBQ and Blues.
Teenagers often believe that they are the first humans ever to have discovered sex. The world-altering swells of feeling and emotion—or the seeming opposite of being let down by the whole experience—feels as revolutionary to each of us as any human walking on the moon.