Rev. Myra preaches on the story of the good samaritan and highlights Jesus’ teaching that the love commandments are for everybody. We are all called to attend to the wounded. To not ask what will happen to me if I do, but what will happen to them if I don’t?

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Rev. Mary invites us to celebrate what’s right with the world.

Homily Transcript

Quite a few years

ago we sent 4 teenagers from our parish down to Haiti.  My son, Matt, was one of them along with 3

others.   They had a great trip.  They got to experience a lot of things.  We never sent teenagers again, but that’s another

story I’ll tell you in another homily.

But I loved the

pictures that they came back with.  One

was especially touching to me because they had just arrived there and three of

the teenagers had brought a lot of luggage and so they were holding on to their

suitcases.  But Matt had only brought a

backpack.  So his arms were around the

Haitians he had just met.  And I thought,

what a great picture that is to remember Jesus’ scripture today where he tells

us to travel light.  To not bring a lot

of stuff with us.  Not on a trip and not

through life.  Because it ties us

down.  Stuff takes time.  It takes time to take care of, it takes time

store, it takes time to put away.  It

takes time away from the time we can spend with one another.

So

Jesus gives these instructions to his disciples and now we are talking 72

disciples, not just the 12 but 72 people that he is going to send out.  Jesus gives them these instructions because

it is very important to Jesus how they think, what their mind set is before

they go on this trip.  Because how we

think determines how we feel which determines how we act. 

So

Jesus is starting from the very beginning, how are they going to think about

this trip.  So he gives them five

instructions for going out to visit these towns. 

The

first instruction:  Go two-by-two.  Don’t try to go through life as a solo

person.  This is not a solo act; you need

other people with you.

Number

two: Travel light.  Don’t take extra

stuff with you.  Don’t take extra money,

extra bags, extra shoes, extra coats. Travel light so that you can be free to

be with the people.

Number

three:  Expect that people will welcome

you and give you hospitality.            For what you expect from others, what you

anticipate is what you will receive.  If

you anticipate the worse, you’ll find the worse.  If you anticipate the best you’ll find the

best.  And he goes on to say that you

deserve that treatment.  “And the

universe will give you what you need.”

Number

four:  Be grateful and know that what you

have is enough.  Don’t be on the lookout

for a better house, or better food or a better deal in life.  This is your life, live it to the fullest. 

Number

five:  If you aren’t welcome, then shake

the dust off your feet and move on.  You

don’t belong there.  You don’t need to

spend time punishing the people who reject you. 

Or try to talk them out of it, or analyses or try to figure out what’s

going on.  Just move on.  The world needs you. 

Jesus

is asking his disciples to think differently so that they can bring other

people to a new way of thinking. To a place where they are aware of how good

they are and how beautiful and how strong they are.

In

this country we do a lot of problem solving. 

We do a lot of problem solving at this church.  I do a lot of problem solving and that’s good

but it only gets us back to normal.  It

only gets us back to where we were before the problem started.  It doesn’t take us any further than

that.  In order to really have powerful

change, we have to celebrate our strengths and recognize what they are so that

we can move forward with a new idea. 

With a new vision.

A

few days ago, like you I celebrated our Independence Day by watching the

fireworks downtown and having a traditional family barbeque.  I did spend some time thinking about the

problems of our country wh

Jesus has a succession plan and it is called you and me. He says two simple words: follow me. He doesn’t say follow the president, politicians, or even the church leaders. He says follow me. Keep your eyes on Jesus and burn your bridges behind you. You and I are it, he has got no backup plan!

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Spiritus Christi parishioner Dawn Louth shares about her trip to Chiapa’s and the incredible people she met, the universal language of music, and teachings she learned.

The post Chiapa’s Mission – By Dawn Louth appeared first on Spiritus Christi Church.

Spiritus Christi parishioner Matt Riccione speaks about his experience as a father and how all the little things add up to make a big difference.

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Rev. Myra preaches about finding peace in challenging times and the power of the Spirit. When we say to one another that all is well, all is not well because we can control the outcomes. All is well because Jesus is in it with us, and he knows like nobody else how to navigate the storms of life. So the invitation in the gospel today is for us to simply turn it over, and let that peace be in us wherever we are right now.

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Fr. Jim preaches on the highs of accomplishment, and the lows of the “midnight hour;” how good things don’t happen quickly, but the night does not last forever. We need to wait for Grace, wait for the Spirit to lead us, and take comfort that neither are far – for they are not up in the sky, but in each person all around us.

homily transcript

Some of you have

heard of Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault, an Episcopal Priest, has written a number of

books.  She told a story about what

happened when she was young.  When she

was twelve years old her next door neighbor got suddenly sick with kidney

failure and her parents told this twelve year old, “Dan is dying.”  She never knew anybody who was dying

before.  So she went to the park across

the street.  She said it was December,

the snow was falling and she raged to God, “What’s going on here?  How come he is going to die?  How can this ever happen?“  Then all of a sudden she heard a voice.  “Sh-h-h, Dan will die but all will be

well.”   And she said, “I relaxed.  I realized that there was something in me

that knew.  I didn’t know what it knew,

but I knew it was the voice of truth. 

And I surrendered to it. ”

Today is the Feast

of the Ascension; the day Jesus leaves the earth for the final time.  For the last 40 days since Easter we have

been hearing how he has been appearing and disappearing, how he has gone

through walls and going through doors. 

The purpose of all these stories is to teach us that the line between

heaven and earth is paper-thin.  The veil

between this life and the next life is permeable. 

Anne Lamott says,

“Death is just a major change of address.” 

We are living in a different zip code, on the other side.

Jesus says, “It is

better for me to leave you because if I don’t go I won’t be sending the Holy

Spirit to be with you.  So Jesus’

departure is not really an absence.  It’s

a presence in a different form.

Now, when Jesus

left he must have felt a great sense of accomplishment.  In August 2011 NASA launched a spacecraft

named Juno from Cape Canaveral to go up to Jupiter.  Five years later, July 4, 2016, it arrived at

Jupiter and started to orbit the planet. 

The moment it arrived at Jupiter everyone at NASA let out a collective

cheer and high-fiving everybody – did you ever see those scenes? Everybody was

so excited.  Because they had waited five

years after planning this project and finally it is accomplished.  What a great sense of accomplishment.

Now people

graduating from high school, or college or people retiring, you can appreciate

this.  A sense of accomplishment.

I remember in

2006, Wegman’s received an award for the Best Company to Work For in the United

States.  I remember Bob Wegman, the CEO,

said, “I’ve waited all my life for this moment.”  And then he died shortly after. 

I remember Dorothy

MacAvoy, she was 80 years old, and she attended Reverend Mary’s

ordination.  She came out at the Eastman

Theater and she threw up her arms and she said, “Lord!  You can take me.  I’ve seen everything now.  I’m ready to die.”

Sarah Lee spent

ten years out in the streets degrading herself on Lyell Avenue and then she

lived 52 days at Jennifer House.  She

said it was the hardest 52 days of her life. 

A few years later she became the Director of Jennifer House.  Last month she got her Masters in Social Work

degree.  What a sense of accomplishment.

At every AA

meeting the leader says, “Is there anybody here celebrating an

anniversary?”  “Yea,“ one replied, “two

years.” Everybody cheers.  “Six years!”

Everybody applauds.  Even if you had been

sober 30 days or 90 days you get a sobriety coin.

Last Friday I

mowed my grass and I was sitting in the back yard and some kids in the

neighborhood came over and this one girl sa

Rev. Myra preaches on the challenge of peace and tells us that Jesus believes in us. That we are smart enough to accept this challenge of peace, this gift of peace, and when we do that means we must not get on the bus of violence, we must not ride on the trolley of injustice, or skate on the boards of exclusion. Because the challenge of peace calls on us to love in new ways. So the question we must ask, in this day and in this age, is what does that look like for me?

The post The Challenge of Peace – By Rev. Myra Brown appeared first on Spiritus Christi Church.

Rev. Mary Ramerman preaches about living big; boundaries, integrity, and generosity.

Homily Transcript

Brené Brown is a speaker, author, and professor at a university in

Texas.  She speaks about shame,

vulnerability and courage. These are areas that she researches in her work and

she also has written a number of books and has one of the top ten Ted Talks and

I wrote about her recently in the bulletin. 

 I want to mention her because she

very much influenced my homily today.  I

probably should send her a check afterwards! 

But I at least want to give her credit for the ideas.  Also at the end the thoughts come from the

Blessed Mother Mary.  So I want to thank

her too for inspiring this homily today.

So Jesus says

today, “I give you a new commandment. Love one another.”  Which is really not new it was already a

commandment before Jesus’ time.  But he

gives it with great emphasis.  He says,

“I only have a little bit longer with you and this is what I want you to

know.  You must love one another as I

have loved you. You must love one another.” So what does that mean?  Love one another. How do we truly love one

another? 

I think when we

think about loving one another we have to start at the beginning, which is:  how do we love ourselves?  We can’t love anybody else if we can’t love

ourselves.

The Star War movies,

I was a big Star Wars fan and just heard there is another one coming out which

I was very happy to hear.  One of them,

in the Empire Strikes Back, Yoda (remember little Yoda?) is training Luke to be

a Jedi warrior.  He is training him how

to use the force and especially to be aware of the dark side of the force.

Beware of anger and fear and how that can ensnare him if he doesn’t learn to

find within himself calm and inner peace. 

As they journey along they come to a dark cave, which frightens

Luke.  Yoda explains to Luke that the

cave is very dangerous and strong with the dark side of the force.  “In you must go!” says Yoda.  “What’s in the cave?” asks Luke.  “Only what you take with you.”  Yoda responds.  As Luke straps on his weapons Yoda says,

“Your weapons, you will not need them.” 

Luke enters the cave.  It is very

dark and scary.  There are thick vines in

the ceiling.  There is steam rising off

of the ground and there is a large snake winding its ways through the

trees.  As Luke descends in to the cave

he is confronted by his enemy, Darth Vader. 

They both draw their light sabers and Luke quickly cuts of Vader’s

helmeted head.  The head falls to the

ground, the face guard flies off the helmet and Vader’s face is revealed.  Only it isn’t Darth Vader’s face.  It is Luke’s face.  Luke is starring at his own head on the

ground.

Walking in to the

dark cave is a metaphor for walking in to our own stories of hurt.  It can feel very dangerous and

foreboding.  We can’t anticipate seeing

our enemy but what we ultimately confront in our own stories is ourselves.  The most difficult part of our stories is

what we bring to them.  What we make up

about who we are and what we guess that we are perceived by others.  Yes we all make mistakes.  We make mistakes in our jobs, in our

relationships and in our families and with our neighbors.  We say thing we wish we never said.  We do things we wish we had never done.  We make a lot of mistakes.

But the most

painful part of life is not the mistakes. 

It is what we tell ourselves about our own self worth and values.  We diminish ourselves, we judge ourselves.  We think sometimes that we are no longer even

worthy of being loved. 

To love someone

else we first have to open up to ourselves and recon with our own discovery of

imperfection.  When we do that,  when we acknowledge our own strengths and our

weaknesses, then we can

Spiritus parishioner Kirsten Reader shares her story of motherhood. Once Kirsten asked her mom, when does life settle down? Her mom said life never really settles down, it just keeps going up the hills and down the valleys. Even when times got really tough, Kirsten just tried to do the next right thing. Not only was she able to get through struggles for her children and herself, but blessings emerged everyday that were beyond her dreams.

Homily Transcript

Happy Mothers day to all of the moms. Happy Mothers’ Day to all of us.  I am blessed with a long line of strong women, a deeply loving mother, a beautiful stepmother that embraces me and my children as her own, and a whole tribe of pretty incredibly, smart, and hilarious women I get to mother with.  We all have a mother story. For many it’s joy, for some there’s some sadness there. But as Father Jim said recently at a baptism – he blessed the baby in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit – one god and mother to us all.  So there you go – we all have at least one if not many comforting mother’s day stories. Here is mine.

Personally,  I think birth is so awful to get us ready, right?  Women love to tell their birth stories, and it’s understandable because its; kind of like we die and come back to life.  And that is a pretty good story. And everybody likes a good resurrection story. Birthing babies is wild and crazy and mind blowing as Prince Harry recently and accurately called it.  I still think it’s crazy and I did it. Voluntarily. Twice. So that I could be a mom.

Ever since I was a little I wanted to be a mother.  I used to dream of having my own baby and a body that could hold it and carry it and feed it.  My favorite Christmas present was the year I wrote to Santa to tell him I wanted a baby that looked like a real baby. Looking back on this, I don’t totally understand why that would be; it doesn’t make cognitive sense does it.  Real live children are, after all, difficult, expensive, time consuming, worrisome, challenging, loud, and messy. And just when we figure out where they are, where they are coming from, why they are doing what they are doing, and what we did to make it that way, they enter a new stage in life and we are left, yet again, with no instructions and a crying human telling us that whatever it is we did or didn’t do is ruining their life and that of course, we just don’t understand.  That was not in my cache of knowledge though at the time that I was 7. My adult self wonders why I didn’t just enjoy my childhood, throw caution to the wind, and play with mud and blocks and puzzles and Mr. Potato Head. For some whacky reason, domesticity was so appealing to my 7 year old self. I wanted to cook, sweep, bake, feed babies, wrap up children, and even calm down crying dolls. This was my idea of fun. Playing at adulting was my kind of play.

What was unbeknownst to me was the actual reality of motherhood.  What I DID know, is that it would be absolutely magical. I am sure, I am positive, that every mother in here would say that the most incredible journey of their life is that of being a mother. First of all, it is just wild.  Carrying around a human and then pushing it out of our bodies is mindblowing. When my first child was born, I was 30. I couldn’t wait. I mean 30 years right? I just had to keep her safe through the pregnancy. Eat well, take my vitamins, prepare the room, I even had a birth plan like a good liberal feminist.  Then I had her at 2:33 on a Friday afternoon in May of 2002. After giving us a tiny scare by not actually breathing – she was perfect – all 6 # 15 oz of her. She fed and slept and made noises and smelled delicious.

About 9 o’clock that night, her life flashed before my eyes and I kind of could not believe what I had actually done.  I now had to keep her al