Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21 (links validated on 2/10/25a)

Msgr. Shea is the President of the University of Mary in North Dakota and he shared that when teaching a course to his Freshmen, he likes to show this scene from the 2007 film “Paris, I love You.” Picture a man sitting in an elegant Parisian restaurant, the same place where years ago he first realized he no longer loved his wife. Now he’s waiting for her again, but this time with devastating news: he’s planning to leave her for another woman. His hands tremble slightly as he watches her approach. She sits down, and before he can speak, tears begin streaming down her face. His heart stops – surely she must know about the affair. But then she reaches into her purse with shaking hands and pulls out a medical report. As he reads the cold, clinical words, his world shifts on its axis: terminal illness, weeks to live, no treatment options. In that moment, everything changes. The speech he had rehearsed a hundred times evaporates. The other woman, the planned new life – all of it suddenly seems hollow, meaningless. He takes his wife home that night, not out of pity, but because it’s the only thing he can do. And then something extraordinary happens. In the weeks that follow, as he helps her dress, holds her hand during treatments, reads to her late into the night – he finds himself falling in love again. Not with the memory of who she was, but with who she is, even in her fragility. Perhaps especially in her fragility. “By acting like a man in love,” the narrator tells us, “he became a man in love again.”...

Ash Wednesday has its choice hymnody, for sure. There are songs that congregations expect to sing every year. There are also popular songs, however, that fit the theme. One such tune flows down the decades to us from the year 1973. It goes like this: “Every time that I look in the mirror All these lines on my face getting clearer The past is gone…”...We are all, however, on a march toward an end. Whether we like it or not, Ash Wednesday is here to confront us with this uncomfortable reality. The song continues: The past is gone… “It went by like dusk to dawn. Isn’t that the way? Everybody’s got their dues in life to pay.”...

let’s now talk about a specific sin like “narcissism” and a specific problem called narcissistic personality disorder or NPD. Got it? Let’s talk about NPD. There’s an interesting Greek myth that predates the use of this term in psychology. Narcissus, a handsome youth, so the story goes, continued to reject all the lovely girls that the gods sent his way, even Echo whose words came back to her every time she spoke. In frustration, the gods punished him by trying to make him fall in love with his image in a quiet pool of water. When Narcissus discovered that his image didn’t respond to him, he became increasingly despondent and finally died. I liked to remind my students in Developmental Psych that Freud decided to address one of the great human predicaments with this myth. Already in infancy, children are predisposed to desire their own needs first. Self-centered desire is narcissism. As we mature, hopefully, we grow out of the need to put ourselves first. To some degree, we never will. A minority of us will have serious problems with self-centeredness. We say that such people are just “full of themselves”! Psychologists may call it NPD...

Welcome to Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent! A few years ago when at a friend’s home, one of their sons had a book on the kitchen table – well he had a bunch of books on the kitchen table which resulted in some drama, but one of them was titled “When I was your age.” Actually when I picked that book up and started leafing through it and laughing (not so much to myself) that was when his mom started yelling about her son leaving his stuff all over the place, so it was my fault, but I digress. What made me laugh was just the title “When I was your age.” I joked to my friends “I never knew my father wrote a book” Because that was a favorite phrase of his. I don’t know how many times when my brothers and I were growing up and maybe we would complain about something. Like having to walk home from school that would set him off. “When I was your age” as he talked about having to walk 20 miles in a blizzard, stopping to save a cat stuck in a tree for his mother’s best friend while chopping wood for the fireplace at home (mind you, as much as he tried to depict himself as Paul Bunyon in the wild frontier, he grew up in Newark and Nutley NJ). Italians like to call this “the suffering Olympics” to see who could “top” the other in stories of how much harder life was, how much tougher they had it compared to the generation that followed them...

A few weeks ago, a student asked me if I had seen the television program, The Bachelor. She was asking more specifically because of a story line that is a part of the show this season, but my response kind of filled in the blanks to that question and any follow-ups she might have had: “Have I ever seen it? Yes… once, a few years ago… as a punishment for a bet I lost.” Shocking, I’m sure, that this program isn’t really my thing. A reality show where a man is introduced to a number of women who are presented as possible “romantic interests” leading to a season finale of them getting married… There’s a whole list of things that I could rattle off that bother me about this show (as well as, to be fair, its companion show, the Bachelorette which flips the roles and has a woman introduced to a number of single guys with the same premise). When I looked at wikipedia, I couldn’t believe that the show in the US has had over 23 seasons since 2002. I realize I’m probably sounding like a grumpy old man if I’m overly critical here and I don’t want to make fun of it, especially for any fans out there...

Several women made complaints to the NY Times that the comedian Louis C.K. had also committed several acts of sexual misconduct. Pretty quickly, Louis C.K. acknowledged that the stories were completely true. What was different about this case though was the response that came from fellow comedienne Sarah Silverman. She acknowledged the painful reality that Louis C.K. “wielded his power with women in ways that were troubling and sometimes made these women feel they had to leave the field of comedy entirely.” After reading her heartbroken statement about the situation, what really hit me was this final point she made: “I love Louie,” she said, “but Louie did these things. Both of those statements are true. So, I just keep asking myself, can you love someone who did bad things? Can you still love them?...

I recently read Elaine Pagles’ touching memoir, Why Religion?[i] In this poignant book the Princeton University professor of religious history tells of how her son, Mark, was diagnosed with a rare and invariably fatal pulmonary disorder. She walks the reader through the excruciating knowledge that her little boy will never live to see adulthood, and later through the stages of grief when Mark died at the age of six. As if the loss of a child were not enough sorrow, Pagels’ husband was killed in a hiking accident 15 months after their son’s death. Like Job, Pagels found herself sitting in her own spiritual ash pit asking why? Her double tragedy convinced her that she would rather feel guilt than helplessness; nevertheless, she came to the conclusion that it is pointless to look for meaning in the face of such pain. We must ultimately create meaning out of it...

In her poem “Storage,” Mary Oliver describes the total emptying of a storage unit she rented for years: I felt like the little donkey when his burden is finally lifted. Things! Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful fire! More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothing—the reason they can fly.

Some of the senior citizens here today can remember a song that was popular exactly 53 years ago this year. In 1971, a group from Canada called the Five Man Electrical Band had a hit called “Signs.” The song is about how signs are always telling us what to do, and the chorus says, “Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?” Five decades and counting later, the question it poses – “Can’t you read the sign?” — is one we might ask ourselves today. We are going to be signed with ashes in the sign of our Faith, the cross. “Can’t you read the sign?” — The cross of ashes means that we are making a commitment – that we are undertaking Lent as a season of prayer and penitence, of dying to ourselves. It also describes our human condition: it says that we are broken and need repair; that we are sinners and need redemption. Most importantly, it tells us that, as followers of Jesus Christ, we are to carry our crosses. It also reminds us that we are dust and ashes – mortal human beings carrying and informed by an immortal soul.

Barbara Brown Taylor offered these words on the Ash Wednesday after 9/11: “When I went to the rail this year I received a different sacrament. The gospel of the day is not about the poverty of flesh so much as it is about the holiness of ashes, which are worthy of all reverence. It was God who decided to breathe on them, after all, God who chose to bring them to life. We are certainly dust and to dust we shall return, but in the meantime our bodies are sources of deep revelation for us…Those ashes are not curses. They are blessings instead, announcing God’s undying love of dust no matter what kind or shape it is in.”...

The terrible war in Bosnia and Herzegovina ended in December 1995. The fighting between Serbs and Croats had set itself up along ethnic and religious lines and so deepened the divisions between the warring factions that it seemed impossible to imagine any type of peace, much less healing and reconciliation. A Franciscan priest began a revolutionary project in early 1996. He recruited singers from across the country, people who were gifted in music. They were not necessarily professionals, but just people who were known in their towns and communities for their voices. He brought them all together, Muslims and Christians, Serbs and Croats, some literally fresh off the battlefield, and asked them to begin singing together. But not just any songs. He asked them to sing the most traditional and well-known and deeply rooted religious songs of the Bosnian people, both Christian songs and Muslim songs. He asked them to sing the songs of their enemies...

A few weeks ago, I was watching the NFL football game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Buffalo Bills. After making a tackle, a player for Buffalo stood up and then about a second later collapsed. It was a medical emergency, and it went on and on. They kept cutting to commercials and would come back and each time nothing had changed, the player was still lying on the field. An ambulance was on the field and medical personnel were working on him. The announcers did not know what to say and they were as shaken as anybody. We heard that his heart had stopped. And all around, football players were in tears. They surrounded the injured player in part to give him privacy in the midst of 80,000 people and a national TV audience. And these players and coaches, from both teams, were praying for Damar Hamlin. It didn't particularly matter what their faith or even whether they were religious. They were praying for their teammate and friend and fellow human being. In such times, prayer seems to be just the natural inclination of our hearts...

I don’t know about you, but when I read the Ash Wednesday lectionary scripture this year, I immediately thought of George Michael. First, let me apologize in case Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go is now stuck in your head. Second, let me explain. Despite his international celebrity status as one half of the duo Wham! and as a successful pop star in his own right, it was only after his untimely death in 2016 that another side of his life became public: he had anonymously donated millions to charities, secretly bankrolled ordinary people’s dreams, and volunteered regularly at homeless shelters where he asked that his participation be kept quiet. George Michael’s under-the-radar generosity stood out in part because it ran so contrary to the more common mold of celebrity giving: many lend their faces to high profile events that highlight their pet causes, yes, but also conveniently give the stars a PR boost...

God’s greatest desire for us is that the ashes on the forehead will be a symbol not of despair, but of hope. Did you know that one of the most beautiful and cherished items in all the world — a diamond — is nothing more than carbon dust (ashes, in other words) that’s been exposed to pressure? I remember learning this fun fact, as a kid, while watching the old black-and-white Superman TV series, the one starring George Reeves. There’s a scene, in one of those episodes, in which Superman takes a lump of coal in his hand, and squeezes it, very hard. He grunts. He grimaces. Smoke comes out of his clenched fist. When he opens his hand, the lump of coal is there no longer. A glittering diamond has taken its place.In God’s hand, the ashes of a human life are more than mere refuse, to be carted away. By the amazing power we call grace, you and I can be transformed from our natural state of sin into something strong and beautiful...

Prior to a ballet performance, I hold to a strict ritual of dusting my pointe shoes with rosin, a crystalized tree sap. A pointe shoe’s toe box is formed by layers of hardened glue and satin. This binds the foot, enabling the dancer to channel the strength of her ankles and feet to rise up onto the tips of her toes and balance there. But the toe box also makes the shoes quite slick, and rosin dust helps offset this. The feat of elevation that pointe shoes provide gives the illusion of overcoming the earthly demands of gravity. Charles Didelot invented them in 1795 and called them “flying machines.” Marie Taglioni wowed audiences with her ethereal dancing in 1825, when she became the first ballerina to perform a role entirely en pointe in La Sylphide. While pointe shoe construction has evolved since then, rosin dust remains, and I apply it to my shoes as if my life depended on it. A shallow, plastic box of amber crystals of rosin hides in the wings on either side of the stage, ready to be crushed into friction-creating dust that keeps me from falling on my face. Amy Ziettlow @RevAmyZ Amy Ziettlow is pastor of Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Decatur, Illinois, and author (with Naomi Cahn) of Homeward Bound: Modern Families, Elder Care, and Loss. See All Articles image of cover Feb 26, 2020 issue As rosin dust holds my feet fast, the dust of Ash Wednesday stops me in my tracks, disrupting my vertiginous illusions of grandeur, permanence, and indispensability...

Jesus himself wants to walk with us, work within each of us. C. S. Lewis said: 'Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to?...

Back in 2012, Noah Wall, while still in his mother’s womb developed a medical condition called hydrocephalus.　 It is a very rare thing where there’s a build up of fluid that in this case pushed so hard that it basically crushed Noah’s skull destroying 98% of his brain.　Think about that - he was only born with 2 % of his brain.　 Instead of purchasing cribs, his parents went through the devastating process of choosing coffins for their unborn son - as they were told it was unlikely Noah would survive after being born paralyzed. But the loving parents lovingly welcomed their son into the world on March 6, 2012 - the doctors followed all the protocols that were possible and amazingly - particularly to the doctors who were treating him - a few weeks after his birth, his brain started to grow; continued to grow, and eventually was fully functioning...

"This film stars comedian Bill Murray who plays this arrogant, condescending, self-centered weatherman named Phil Connors who is sent to Punxsutawney Pennsylvania to cover the annual Groundhog Day festivities. He grudgingly files his report about the groundhog seeing his shadow and predicting six more weeks of snow, the crew packs up their gear into the van, and they attempt to leave. But a blizzard hits, which forces them to stay an additional night. When Phil wakes up the next morning, he recognizes right away something's not right..."

Jesus’ focus on this passage is also not about hoarding secrets; nor is it about individualized spirituality. Instead, it is an encouragement for believers to pay attention to what Father Richard Rohr so eloquently speaks of as our “inner authority” (see https://cac.org/inner-authority-2017-01-22/ for more). It is in this quiet place, the hidden and secret spaces of our hearts, where we learn to listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit, and it is here that God truly sees us. As we practice our faith in these ways, we meet ourselves as God created us to be—God’s image reflected in our faces and lives.

Many of the stories and poems that we associate with childhood contain great wisdom. Such is the case with these lines: "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; All the King's horses and all the King's men Cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again." 1 The illustration that one book gives for this nursery rhyme features a very large and well-dressed egg, complete with a red bow tie, looking quite startled as he begins his fall toward irreversible ruin. What makes "Humpty Dumpty" a memorable nursery rhyme is that it tells us something about ourselves. Each of us is Humpty Dumpty. Each of us is a cracked, broken egg that no power on earth can repair...

Primo Levi, in his memoire of Auschwitz, If This Is a Man, favors description over denunciation, knowing that an accurate account of what happened there needs no moralizing. Levi was one of seven inmates chosen to work in a chemical lab. His description of the doctor, who examines the suitability of the Italian and his companions for the work, is as blunt as the baptismal rite. It simply declares evil to be something ugly and stupid, something which separates us from ourselves...

"In her work, Lent: A Time to Choose Direction, Joan Chittister writes: "Lent is our time to prepare to carry the crosses of the world ourselves. People around us are hungry; it is up to us to see that they are fed, whatever the cost to ourselves. Children around us are in danger on the streets; it is up to us to see that they are safe..."

("Nebraska, nominated for Best Film this year, is about a family frozen in shoulds and failures, a family for whom most of their hopes have turned to ashes. They risk a journey into the unknown, which is themselves and where they came from, Nebraska. They travel in the past and the present simultaneously, visiting old sorrows and hidden truths. In free fall, they learn a lot, and a lot of what they learn is dismal, some of it scary....")

("The infant had been born without a complete digestive track. The pediatric surgeon gave the news to the stunned father and grandmother. The priest listened. 'Many surgeries, really that's all', the doctor said, 'and months and even years of healing and recovery would be able to restore her functions'. 'So it must be done,' the family and priest agreed....")

A story in Time Magazine, July, 1971, begins – “WANTED. JESUS CHRIST. ALIAS: the Messiah, the Son of God, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Prince of Peace, etc.” [One estimate is there are 600 alternative names for Jesus!] “Notorious leader of an underground liberation movement. WANTED for the following charges: Practicing medicine, winemaking and food distribution without a license. Interfering with businessmen in the temple. Associating with known criminals, radicals, subversives, prostitutes and street people. Claiming to have authority to make people into God’s children. APPEARANCE: Typical hippie type – long hair, beard, robe, sandals. Hangs around slum areas, few rich friends, often sneaks out into the desert. BEWARE: This man is extremely dangerous. His insidiously inflammatory message is particularly dangerous to young people who haven’t been taught to ignore him yet. He changes people and claims to set them free.” [Sound like anyone so “feared” today?] There’s more. I’ll leave some for Sunday. You get the idea! This season is all about Jesus -- arousing fear, making trouble, undermining security, mobilizing dissent. This season is all about Jesus -- under suspicion, under surveillance, generally “underground” – questioned, confronted, harassed, entrapped – accused, arrested, abandoned, betrayed, denied, charged, tortured, tried, convicted, condemned, humiliated, executed...

("Ruth Harms Calkin put it this way in a poem I Wonder: 'You know, Lord, how I serve You with great emotional fervour in the limelight. You know how eagerly I speak for You at a Women's Club...")

("The cup of water in the name of Christ revives the body and the soul. Without the cup the water cannot be given. Without the water the cup is empty mockery...")

("His name was Orval Hobart Mowrer. Orval Hobart did what I suspect I might have done had my mother named me Orval Hobart—he became a therapist. Specifically, Mowrer practiced psychoanalysis..." and another illustration)

("In the movie Rudy, the hero is an undersized young man from a steel town who wanted to play football for Notre Dame. During one of his worst days, he goes to see a priest at the College chapel; asking him all those 'why?' questions we are prone to in moments of disappointment. The priest smiled and said to him, 'I've been a priest for over 40 years and there are only two things I am absolutely certain of: There is a God, and I'm not him.'...")

("Fast from worry, and feast on divine order by trusting in God. Fast from complaining, and feast on appreciation. Fast from negatives, and feast on affirmatives...")

("Fast from judgment, Feast on compassion. Fast from greed, Feast on sharing. Fast from scarcity, Feast on abundance. Fast from fear, Feast on peace. Fast from lies, Feast on truth. Fast from gossip, Feast on praise. Fast from anxiety, Feast on patience. Fast from evil, Feast on kindness. Fast from apathy, Feast on engagement. Fast from discontent, Feast on gratitude...What will be your fast? What will be your feast?...")

("I recall an essay about Desmond Tutu, retired Archbishop of Cape Town, in South Africa, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and leader of the struggle against the old order in South Africa. He is portrayed as an outstanding example of the Benedictine spirituality that is such an important part of our Anglican tradition. In the essay, there's a quote from his confessor, Francis Cull: 'As I ponder the prayer life of Desmond Tutu I see the three fundamental Benedictine demands that there shall be: rest, prayer, and work and in that order...")

Author Richard Hart tells the story of a Russian woman whose son was court-martialed and executed shortly before the start of World War 2. The grieving mother searched out the soldier who had fired the shot that killed her son, only to discover that he was critically ill and near death. The mother nursed him back to life and then adopted him...

(includes several quotes)

("Think of the poor souls who haven't been in church since the First Sunday of Advent! How will it be with their spirits when the Consubstantial Lord seeks to come under their roofs?..." Ooh, I just love that line!!)

["As a newspaper columnist had it sometime back (who happens to have a good grasp on the subject by virtue of his own Catholicism), Lent is "AN EXCUSE TO BE BETTER". He wrote, 'A steady stream...paraded down the aisle and paused for a priest to smudge the sign of the cross on our foreheads and warn, "Remember, you are dust and to dust you will return." The message is: Be humble. No problem. Humility comes easily if you're a Catholic..."]

("A Catholic priest working in an inner city was walking down an alley one evening on his way home when a young man came down the alley behind him and poked a knife against his back. 'Give me your money,' the young man said...")

("Madeleine L'Engle may speak for many of us. She writes of Lent as a 'strange bleak season in the Church Year'. Its own bleakness is only reenforced by the calendar - it appears when most of us are ready for spring, but at a time when spring has not yet come...")

I've been reading Khaled Hosseini's latest novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, set in recent-day Afghanistan. In it there's this beautiful scene of two women at odds with each other. The older, Mariam, is the wife of Rasheed, a shoemaker. The younger, Laila, is only fourteen and has recently been orphaned by the warring factions. Rasheed takes advantage of her vulnerability and offers to marry her on the pretense of wanting to protect her and provide for her. Having no other choice, she consents. So, the two women are now forced to share a husband and a home. Mariam will have nothing to do with Laila, and Laila feels powerless to compete with Mariam. In time, Laila gives birth to a beautiful little girl whom she names, Aziza. At first, this only heightens Mariam's jealously. But as she watches Laila nursing her daughter and feels her powerlessness to do anything but submit to Rasheed's demands – and, often – his wrath, her heart begins to overflow with compassion, sympathy and love. One morning, Laila opens her bedroom door and finds a neatly stacked array of baby clothes for her daughter, all lovingly hand-stitched by Mariam. The wall of hostility begins to crumble, as the two women form a common bond with each other...

There’s an episode of the TV show Frasier (1) that begins with him getting in a fender-bender car accident and the air bag possibly breaking his nose. He goes to a crowded Emergency Room to get it checked out, where he gets put low on the priority list. The waiting is made more unbearable by a fellow person waiting who insists on trying to make silly small talk. In frustration, Frasier finally gets up and walks out. Sure enough, his name is immediately called after he leaves, and the scene closes with that annoying person using Frasier’s name to jump the line. The next scene is Frasier at home with an ice bag on his nose, talking with his father with the evening news on TV in the background. They suddenly spot Frasier’s picture on the TV and turn the sound up to hear the anchor person pronounce, “We’re sorry to report that well-loved radio personality Dr. Frasier Crane has died tonight in a Seattle Emergency Room.” Apparently, the annoying man who answered for Fraiser’s name in the ER collapsed immediately and died of a heart attack. The story leaked out to the press before the hospital discovered the error in identity. The story hit the evening newspaper, too, so that Frasier got to actually read the obituary they wrote for him, as a local celebrity. What happens next is the interesting part for our Ash Wednesday reflections. For the rest of the episode, Frasier uses the incident as a wake-up call. He ponders questions like, What should I be doing with the rest of my life? What are my priorities? The premature story of his own death has him realizing that there’s a lot of dreams he had for his life that he hasn’t begun to realize. He actually writes his own obituary as an exercise in goal-setting, so that he can begin doing the things he’d like to see in his obituary someday...

("In a moderately sized city not so long ago lived two artists. These two men had comparable talents in doing various crafts from carpentry and woodwork to stained glass and works of metal. Yet, their talents were about the only way these two men were alike...")

("In his book They Call Me Coach, John Wooden shares his philosophy: 'One of the little things I watch closely is a player's socks. No basketball player is better than his feet. If they hurt, if his shoes don't fit, or if he has blisters, he can't play the game...")

("Scott Peck provides us with a helpful reminder of the importance of discipline when he tells us a story from his childhood. Apparently, Peck enjoyed riding his bicycle to and from his friend's houses. He especially enjoyed the journey home because the steep downhill grade about a mile from his house...")

("A former Trappist monk remembers s at the Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity monastery in Huntsville. He remembers how the monks would walk barefoot through the stone church, keeping time to Gregorian chants, marching eventually into the old church where they received a daub of ashes on their foreheads...")

("In 1936 the country went crazy about How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie, a public speaking instructor. In 1952 the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale authored The Power of Positive Thinking - a wildly popular sequel to an earlier book...")

("Recently I revisited the movie Chocolat. It offered some tasty images that I'm carrying with me as I cross the threshold into the season of Lent...")

("As we approach Ash Wednesday, I've found myself thinking about Sojourner Truth. Born into slavery in New York around 1797 with the name Isabella Baumfree, the girl who would become Sojourner had ten or twelve sisters whom she only knew from stories told by her mother...")

["Imagine: In a world where (Remember that old movie Love Story) 'I love you means never having to say you are sorry', we are called through self examination and repentance to say it every day and over and over again. In a world where buying is synonymous with godliness, where consumption is an act of patriotism, we are called to fasting and self denial...")

There is an ancient Egyptian myth about a bird which regenerates itself by burning itself up. Imagine, the living phoenix literally makes an offering of itself: it carefully builds a nest, settles down in it, and burst into flame. From the ashes left by those flames emerges a magnificent reborn bird. The new phoenix is so beautiful that it has been dedicated to the sun in all its glory. Think of the courage it took to do this. The bird knows it must die to create a new bird in its place. Not only must it die, but it must also be burned until nothing is left of it but ashes. Think of the faith this bird has in the process of creation...

("'The infant had been born without a complete digestive track'. The pediatric surgeon gave the news to the stunned father and grandmother. The priest listened. 'Many surgeries, really that's all', the doctor said, 'and months and even years of healing and recovery would be able to restore her functions'. 'So it must be done,' the family and priest agreed...")

("Recently I had an opportunity to see the film Patch Adams, starring Robin Williams. It is an extraordinary story about a man who wanted to become a doctor. He succeeded but it wasn't without a real struggle. Patch Adams was a brilliant student but he had an unorthodox way of relating to patients...")

("She had been a charter member of Trinity Church when it was founded just after World War II. She was an 'original' and she was faithful. Every Sunday she sat in the same place, third pew on the right, just past the first large pillar...")

("Above the mountains the geese turn into the light again Painting their black silhouettes on an open sky. Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you...")

Scroll down the page for this resource.

Scroll down the page for this resource.

Scroll down the page for this video.

Scroll down the page for this resource.

I once attended a seminar in which the speaker started his presentation by holding up a $50 note. In the room of about 200 people, he asked, “Who would like this $50 note?” You can believe that 200 hands quickly went up. He proceeded to crumple up the note. He then asked, “Who still wants it?” The hands went up again. Then he dropped it on the ground and ground it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, crumpled and dirty, and said. “Now who still wants it?” The hands went up. He said, “You’ve all learned a valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the note, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $50.” Many times in our lives, our own decisions or those of other people drop us, crumple us, and grind us into the dirt. We feel as though we are worthless. Nevertheless, no matter what has happened or what will happen, we will never lose our value: dirty, clean, crumpled or finely creased, we are still priceless to the One who knows us through and through, and values us so much that He wants to live in friendship with us forever...

Two faces. That’s a hypocrite. It’s the Greek word for an actor who wears one mask with two sides. That’s how Jesus refers to those who were generally thought to be the super-religious of his day. They seemed one way in public and another way in private. Jesus is about consistency across the board. But there’s something lost in translation. Jesus is not only saying 'don’t be a hypocrite' he saying, 'don’t be a ridiculous looking hypocrite'...

Carrie likes to run. Every day she runs, rain or shine, frigid or scorching, she runs. Sometimes it is 5 miles, sometimes 10, sometimes more. Carrie runs. She times each run, rejoicing when they are "fast times", determined to do better next run when they are not. She runs. Her life is like that too. Her life is also running. She runs from place to place, project to project, in her fast-paced job. When work is over she runs around with her kids, getting them to all their lessons and practices, games, plays. Her kids run too. She raced to get dinner on the table, to clear up the mess when it is done. When everything is in place, when the older kids are settled in, watching the younger ones, when the day is starting the wind down, that's when Carrie runs. It would seem like there was no purpose to her running, but that would not be true. Her running helps her not to think. Truth be known, she is afraid...

("Longtime North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith died two weeks ago after a long illness. Robert Seymour was Smith's pastor for 30 years and encouraged Smith to recruit the best black player he could find to integrate the basketball team, and he did. In 1967 Smith signed Charlie Scott, the first black player in the ACC and maybe the first at any public university in the south. For Smith, this was a defining moral issue and a matter of faith...")

This month is the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens, one of the most beloved novelists in the English language—and certainly one of the most influential. His story has something to say to our story today. When Dickens was just a young lad, his father died, and so he had to go into a workhouse to be the breadwinner for the family. There he experienced life at its worst. Child labor was common; children were beaten and hardly fed. Crime was rampant and children were forced to be thieves. Prostitution and dishonest public officials were a way of life. When at the age of 14 he was able to leave Blacking Workhouse, he could have followed the low life he had come to understand as commonplace. Instead, however, somehow, he saw the light beckoning to him. He understood that a world of generosity, humanity, and love was waiting to embrace him and everyone who was open to begin again. Many are those who have read the stories of David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Little Nell, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, Great Expectations and many others who were touched by the light that Dickens saw and were encouraged to be different from the mean-spirited people who denied Oliver more food or Cratchit a day off for Christmas. Dickens’ life is a parable of the new possibilities that are given to us all as we seek to the light that summons us from Holy Saturday’s baptismal candle...