Maria Gwyn McDowell
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O Come, O Come: Extending the People of God
Each modification of the hymn serves to amplify the Jewish identity of Jesus, and the varied metaphors speak to God’s redemptive work through Israel, extended through Christians. Joslyn-Siemiatkoski encourages us to “imagine the redemptive landscape as not linear but looping… Continue reading
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I Remember, I Believe
Friends, the beginning of repentance is facing the truth of who we are, so that we know exactly what it is we need to turn away from. Our hope is not in a universe which arcs towards justice by itself,… Continue reading
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Resisting the Political Violence of Herod (and others)
Friends, we will be inundated with the violence of Herod. We already are all the time. It’s around us constantly. It is a story that stands in contrast to the story that we are invited to create, a story that… Continue reading
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Beginning with Forgiveness
Every Sunday, a clergy friend pronounces God’s forgiveness before the corporate confession. In the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (p. 360), it specifies that we confess first, and then the priest or bishop pronounces forgiveness: “Almighty God have mercy on… Continue reading
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Silence or Justice: The Church and Politics
Abstaining from political and social advocacy is the privilege of those who benefit from the status quo, those whose position, power, and wealth is preserved by existing laws and policies. In the face of injustice, especially injustice implemented by fellow… Continue reading
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May Our Hope Not Die With You Metropolitan Kallistos Ware
Now, he has died. A gracious, thoughtful, articulate spokesperson for the best of Orthodoxy to an English-speaking audience has died. I feel like one of the last hopes for a kind and gentle Orthodoxy, for an Orthodoxy that might take… Continue reading
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Making Community with Music
Liturgy makes us who we are, who we are called to be. It is deeply formative: the words we pray, the way we move our bodies, the stillness of the moment, the music that lingers well after the precise words… Continue reading
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Mary, Martha, and Feminism: Check your systems!
My brother clergy, before you publicly declare as white men that a text isn’t feminist, please, check your system. When the church, and the society in which the church finds itself, isn’t sexist, when we can’t remember a time that… Continue reading
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Open Eucharist: a Habitual Binding of God?
I do not believe that as a priest, I should be in the business of binding the profligate abundance of God to a particular linear, cognitive, or traditional process. As a priest, I bind what I see before me, the… Continue reading
