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There’s a certain quality to hospital lighting that makes you wonder whether the architects ever met a patient. It’s that relentlessly cheerful fluorescent glow — halfway between a celestial beacon and an interrogation lamp. I’m convinced it’s designed to keep you both awake and introspective. And as I’ve been recently reminded, nothing invites theological reflectionContinue reading “The Light in the Hospital Corridor – Finding God in Moments of Vulnerability and Healing”

If I were ever foolish enough to attempt writing an eleventh commandment — and there’s a good chance I already have in some sermon or another — it would be this: “Thou shalt laugh at thyself.” Now before the theologians clutch their pearls and the canon lawyers sharpen their quills, let me be clear: IContinue reading “The 11th Commandment: “Thou Shalt Laugh at Thyself” – Finding Humility Through Humour”

Friends, Many times this past week, as I’ve stared at the same four walls, the same institutional beige curtains, and what I suspect may be the same bowl of Jell-O reincarnated from yesterday’s lunch, I’ve found myself thinking of St. Paul’s admonition to “in all things give thanks.” Now, I will confess that I haveContinue reading “Giving Thanks in All Things — Even Hospital Pudding”

One of the great spiritual challenges of life, I’ve discovered, is that faith often asks us to perform a sort of holy two-step that would put even the most limber ballroom dancer to shame. It’s the dance of holding on and letting go — sometimes at the same time. Now, I should say right atContinue reading “Holding On and Letting Go — Sometimes at the Same Time”

(or, How Grace Keeps Messing Up My Plans) Friends, I have a confession to make. I am a recovering perfectionist clergyman. That’s right — my natural habitat is a tidy liturgical schedule, a polished sermon manuscript (preferably footnoted), and a parish hall where the coffee urn is never empty and the custard squares are perfectlyContinue reading “Confessions of a Recovering Perfectionist Clergyman”

It’s a curious thing, really — this idea of “doing nothing.” It’s not something that comes naturally to clergy, to parents, or indeed to most Canadians who were raised with the firm belief that idleness is one step removed from moral decay. “Don’t just sit there — do something!” is the unspoken motto of modernContinue reading “The Ministry of Doing Nothing”

Every preacher has lived through the week when the sermon seems to write itself — which, of course, is always a lie. It never writes itself. What actually happens is that one sits down with noble intent and a full mug of coffee, opens a blank document, and watches in quiet despair as the cursorContinue reading “The Sermon That Wrote Itself (and Other Catastrophes of Inspiration)”

Friends, my recent hospital stay has given me more time to think than is strictly safe for anyone. There’s nothing quite like absolute bed rest — that special phrase which means “you will now do nothing at all, except think about the ceiling tiles and your life choices.” And so I did what any sensibleContinue reading “When Prayer Looks Nothing Like What You Ordered”

It was a bright Sunday morning — or at least as bright as it gets before coffee — when I arrived at the church to discover that the bulletins had gone missing. Not misplaced. Not accidentally printed in the wrong colour. Missing. Gone. Vanished into the great ecclesiastical abyss where paperclips, birettas, and half theContinue reading “Holy Mysteries and the Case of the Missing Bulletins”

(Or, Grace, Technology, and the Perils of the Forgotten Login) It started, as these things so often do, with a simple task. Someone — possibly me — was meant to update the parish website. A few clicks, a cheerful cup of coffee, and the words “Welcome to St. Swithun’s” would once again greet the worldContinue reading “The Church That Forgot Its Password”