According to Ecclesiastes 3:1 and the song by The Byrds, “To everything there is a season.” In much of the Church, we observe the seasons of the two great cycles of the Church Year: Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter. But there are “in between” times which are sometimes counted as “ordinary.” In the Roman Catholic Church, the Sundays after the Feast of the Epiphany and after the Feast of the Pentecost are considered “ordinary time.” Episcopalians are more likely
The Day of Pentecost “Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.” -Acts 2:3 (NRSV) Among the stories people tell about the human relationship with God, most remind people that God’s vision for how we will care for Creation is far more expansive than we expect or imagine. Pentecost is a story like this. Chapter 2 of the Book of Acts tells a surprising tale involving a particular group of people, a
Greetings, Diocese of Olympia and all who may be watching. It is indeed hard to believe that this will be our third Lent in which one of our main overarching themes and topics of daily life is this ongoing pandemic. These last three years have been a rollercoaster, to say the least, up and down, feeling that this long disruption will soon end, only to have it not end, but even worsen. All the while we learn, we grow, we
The following reflection comes from Peach McDouall: My first Episcopalian Epiphanytide was in Durango, Colorado. I had only recently started identifying as a Christian, and I wrote down the words that are the title of this reflection on a little scrap of paper. I put the scrap in my brand new BCP. It is now an old BCP, and that scrap is still there. The rector of that Durango parish was teaching us how my newly-embraced faith tradition understands and
Today we remember the lives of two remarkable men in the history of the Episcopal Church – the Rev. Thomas Gallaudet and the Rev. Henry Winter Syle. Gallaudet established the first deaf Epsicopal congregation and Syle, one of Gallaudet’s students, was the first deaf Episcopal priest. Both men lived out the church’s calling to respond to human need with loving service and to transform the unjust structures of our society. From a young age, Gallaudet’s father had wanted to become
Today we celebrate the Feast of Florence Nightingale, the nurse and social reformer who helped revolutionize patient care and is widely recognized as the founder of modern nursing. Though her views on religion were unorthodox, she became a member of the Church of England later in life and devoted herself to serving God. At seventeen, she wrote in her diary that “God spoke to me and called me to his service,” though she had no clear picture of how that
