Posts Tagged ‘Our Identity’
We Have a Gospel To Proclaim – Br. James Koester
Feast of St. Timothy and St. Titus, Companions of St. Paul
Isaiah 52: 7-10
Psalm 23
Mark 16: 15-20
I had one of those aha moments on Sunday night which keeps reverberating through me. I had flown up from Boston earlier in the day and was staying with my sister and her family. That night my brother and his family came for dinner. The nine of us sat around the dining room table that had once been in my parents’ dining room. We laughed a lot. We caught up on each other’s news. We talked about the upcoming wedding of one of my nephews. We told stories. We exchanged news about my other siblings and their families, who weren’t at dinner that night. And we laughed some more. It was a great evening. Everyone went home or up to bed that night knowing something important had happened.
What happened on Sunday over good food, good wine and good company was that my family was re-membered. The disparate parts of the body were brought together and reconnected through food, wine and story. We reminded ourselves who we are, not as individuals, but as a family. We reminded ourselves who we belonged to and from where we had come. Read More
Marked for Mission – Br. James Koester
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Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord: The First Sunday after the Epiphany
Isaiah 43: 1 – 7
Psalm 29
Acts 8: 14 – 17
Luke 3: 15 – 17, 21 – 22
Grandmothers are some of the most important people in the world, at least in my world. I adored my two grandmothers, and I think it is safe to say that they adored me and my siblings. Both of my grandmothers were knitters. One of my grandmothers, whom we all called Grandma, kept us well supplied with mittens. I am proud to say that a red pair Grandma made for me while I was at university, complete with idiot string, became a fashion trend setter as over the winter more and more of my fellow students, seeing me with mine,began showing up on campus with homemade mittens and idiot strings. My other grandmother, whom we all called Nanny, made a series of Cowichan sweaters; a heavy, patterned, zippered sweater made popular by the Cowichans, a First Nations people of Vancouver Island. We wore these sweaters in the late fall and early spring before the winter coats came out or after they were put away. Nanny made several of these sweaters, and as we outgrew one, another larger one, would be passed down by an older sibling who had outgrown the next one up. Read More