Katharine Jefferts Schori
Self-sustainability Conference
Tela, Honduras
Sermon for Epiphany 8, Year A
I was in another diocese recently, where someone was talking about a clothes closet run by a congregation. A parishioner didn’t understand why he kept seeing the same people come back every 10 days or two weeks. Somebody finally pointed out that the people who use the clothes closet have neither a place nor the […]
Archaeology of Hope
The “Secrets of the Silk Road” exhibition opens today in the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. It was scheduled to show mummies and grave goods from interments in western China. At the last minute the Chinese government withdrew permission to show any of the items in the exhibit, and then relented just a bit to permit […]
Presiding Bishop Preaches in Youngstown, OH
There are questions and anger and grief in Youngstown after the shooting at a student party last week. It makes little sense, even though some have tried to make sense of it by sayThere are questions and anger and grief in Youngstown after the shooting at a student party last week. It makes little sense, […]
Absalom Jones 2011
I was talking to some people in another part of the church last week, and one of them said, “Oh, we did something different last Sunday - some feast for a guy I’d never heard of.” This person managed to tell me enough details to figure out that the congregation had celebrated Absalom Jones, and […]
Cyril and Methodius 2011
Last year I heard about a parishioner in West Virginia who kept on complaining about this prayer book we still call new. He was really angry about it, even decades after it had turned up in his church – so much so that he attached a chain to his 1928 prayer book and fixed the […]
Presiding Bishop Preaches at Church 75th Anniversary
I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed it, but sometimes on a quiet evening in the desert, you can walk outside and smell salt. It’s a whiff of what it smells like at the ocean, not as strong, but definitely salty. There has to be a little moisture in the air, but not too much. […]
Presiding Bishop Preaches at Evensong
In this thirsty desert, people know the treasure that is water. I have a friend who lives in the desert of southern Utah, at the edge of a sleepy little river that flows out of the Virgin Mountains. That river is the same one that carved the canyons of Zion National Park, but most of […]
Martyrs of Japan Sermon 2011
It is striking to have the feast of the Martyrs of Japan fall in the midst of this gathering with the Diocese of Arizona. You have had your own episode of death and destruction that undoubtedly feels like martyrdom to some. There are traditionally two kinds of martyrs – white martyrs and red ones, the […]