Category: Uncategorized

Fifteenth Sunday of the Year (A): Matthew 13:1-23

Of all the challenging situations that we human beings face, perhaps few have a sharper sting than the feeling of having invested oneself, heart and soul, in something or someone, and to have that investment seemingly come to nothing. One man invests himself in a career, only to find himself the victim of downsizing or forced early retirement. One woman invests herself in a marriage, only to find abuse, infidelity and divorce. Parents invest so much time and energy in their children, only to find that some are captured by addictions or ambitions or social pressures. Even the children who grow up and become successful in the world might abandon any obvious practice of their faith. We could cite other examples: an older man or woman whose spouse has severe dementia, or parents whose child has severe autism. It can be very difficult to persevere in the face of such challenges, especially when people end up investing so much of themselves in these ways and can see very little return from their investment. Disappointment is often a bitter dish.   Continue reading “Seeds”

Fourth Sunday of Easter (A): John 10:1-10

As very young children, our first encounter with the world was mediated by our parents. For a time, our parents were our world, for all intents and purposes. We assumed that their way – whether it was how they cooked steak, cut grass or made beds – was the natural way, the only way to do those things. If we encountered other children from other families who had different ways, our first impulse was to assume that our family’s way was the right one.

This principle also applies to our first encounter with faith or religion. As children, we began by assuming that our parents’ faith – or their attitude to faith or religion – was the correct one. Our parents’ faith was right because it was our parents’ one.  Continue reading “The Gate”

I’ve decided to change the theme I have been using for my blog. My “old” theme looked nice and simple. But it had one limitation: it offered no easy way to search and find older posts. This new theme remedies that problem.

You will find some menus on the right. You can simply search the blog – say, if you remember the title of a post you liked and wanted to read again. You can search by category. Click on a category and you will find every post that I have tagged with that category. You can also search by month.

I looked at several themes, and this one seemed to offer the best combination of ease of searching, readable text, and simple, pleasing appearance. I hope you find it attractive and welcoming. The theme can always be changed again!

The email notifications that many of you signed up for are working inconsistently at best. I’ve emailed the support folks at Jetpack (the ones who designed that widget) and I am confident that the problem will be solved soon. In the meantime, you may not get email notifications. Feel free to check this site for new posts.  Thanks for your understanding.

Edit: This is SO weird! No emails went out for my last couple of regular posts. But, when I alert you about the emails NOT working, they work!  Who says that God lacks a sense of humor?

Edit #2: The support folks at Jetpack are working on this. They’ve seen this issue with other sites as well. What’s life without a little challenge or two?

A note for those of you who signed up for email notifications of new posts: for some reason, the emails aren’t going out when I publish a new post, as I did yesterday. I haven’t been able to pinpoint the problem on my end just yet. I have left a message with the folks who designed the email widget. Let’s hope that it gets fixed soon!

Update: The email DID go out for this post!!!  Yay!  Check out the last post, which you may have missed!