Studying The Canon

Pilgrim Andy Guilford's shirt-pocket wisdom.
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Next Stop, Tel Aviv

Just 11 hours to go!
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Two Daughters, Two Phone Calls

During our pilgrim band's layover in Philadelphia, Monte and Robin Nelson phone home.
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Mt. Zion Bound

Chris Nichols, who just got his driver's license, and his mother, Mary, are among 20 St. John's pilgrims at LAX, about to board a flight to Jerusalem. For more details, see Psalm 87!
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Full Field Theory Of Watergate

This explains everything. My Facebook friend Joshua Harrell says Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" is exactly the same length as the famous missing tape segment.

37 Is Still A Lucky Number For Historians

Plenty of news this morning from Nixon historians, present and perhaps future. An amateur scholar working at the National Archives hopes to solve the enduring mystery of the 18.5-minute gap in a 1972 White House recording by trying to figure out what's on a missing page of chief of staff Bob Haldeman's notes from the same meeting. While it's hard to imagine that nobody figured out before now that there was a page missing, we shall see. Meanwhile, back in Yorba Linda, we meet some of the the Nixon Library's 20 summer interns.

Hat tip to Jack Nesbitt

"Greater Than Knowledge": Sermon for 8 Pentecost

When my wife and I offered seats to another couple in an urgent care waiting room in San Diego last week, even as the man moved to accept, he said, "Whatever you want to do," which is a common primal male response. He didn't want to owe us a favor, so he acted like he was doing us one. I've acted the same way whenever I've assumed that there wasn't enough grace to go around. Scarcity thinking afflicts all our relationships and also lies at the root of mass tragedies such as genocide as well as the killing of Jesus Christ. Through the mystery of the feeding of the 5,000 by the Sea of Galilee (which we St. John's pilgrims will visit next week), Jesus offers the radical alternative of abundance. The trick is that nobody -- neither church, government, nor charities -- can be abundant for us. We have to begin by loving God and our neighbor all by ourselves. My Sunday sermon is here.

"A House Collided": Sermon for 7 Pentecost

When Jesus's followers returned from their first missionary journey, he decided they needed a day off and led them to a deserted place. But those who needed to be healed and saved got there first. And so their work continued, and the Church's work continues still. Its heart (the Episcopal Church's, especially, as demonstrated in its recent General Convention in Anaheim) is for the marginalized instead of the majority, the worker instead of management, the Palestinian instead of the Israeli. But when it comes to person-to-person ministry, do we work as hard as Jesus's disciples did? What if we always led with our pastoral selves instead of our own needs? Nurtured by the rich texture of incarnational relationship, our families, workplaces, and churches would be foretastes of St. Paul's new humanity -- households that survive and thrive even if someone happens to drive an Oscar Meyer Wienermobile into our living room. My Sunday sermon is here.

Mix 'Em, Match 'Em, Collect 'Em

Semi-annual self-portrait.
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"What Is Jazz?": Sermon for 6 Pentecost

John the Baptist lost his head because of a disagreement over family values, namely his reprimanding King Herod for marrying his brother's wife. While today's hottest social issues, abortion and homosexuality, won't get anyone's heads chopped off (in the U.S., that is), corrosive debates about them could lead to further dismemberment of the church. That's one reason the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams (shown above), and others have worked hard at this month's General Convention in Anaheim to change the subject to global economics -- not that everyone agrees on that subject, either. Perhaps the best we can do is honor each other's passion for a better world and church and remember, as House of Deputies president Bonnie Anderson reminded us, that unity isn't the same as agreement. My Saturday evening sermon is here.