20th Anniversary Celebration
Grace Notes – July 21, 2024
Vacation Bible School
Notes from General Convention (Part 2)
Bishop Daniel Richards Part Two: A New Hope Continuing with General Convention: when we left off earlier, I promised more than saying goodbye and finding consensus on difficult issues. For many constituents, the General Convention has felt like a win-or-lose event over the years, often measured by the resolutions that were passed. That is not […]
Notes from General Convention 81
Bishop Daniel Richards Part One: The Old Republic “Together in Love” was the theme of the 81st General Convention and by the end, it felt true. There were moments of transcendent worship, joyful reunion, and deep affection and nostalgia as we said thank you and goodbye again and again to the Most Rev. Michael Curry […]
An Official Statement from the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church
“The way of love—not the way of violence—is the way we bind up our nation’s wounds. We decry political violence in any form, and our call as followers of Jesus of Nazareth is always to love. We pray for the families of those who were killed. We pray for former President Trump and his family […]
Grace Notes
The Grace Bell – July 2024
The Grace Bell January 2024
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Crazy, Sneaky, Funny
Jack Hardaway } The taste of freedom. That breath of fresh air. That moment where confinement ends. You know what I mean. Like getting out of a bad job. Or a bad relationship. Or toxic religion. The cessation of pain, fear and abuse. The taste and feel of that moment. The feeling and taste of […]
Two Daughters
Jack Hardaway ] Stories. We are surrounded by stories. Stories of people and pain. The ease with which we can tell our stories, and the ease with which we can hear each other’s stories is one of those slow surprises that we have woken up to in today’s world. We are overwhelmed by each other, […]
A Video Message from Fr. Jack
Children of the Resurrection
We are forgetful. We forget who we are. We forget one another. We are all eventually forgotten, our memory endures for a time among the living, perhaps our name remains behind written somewhere for future generations to wonder who we were. We are forgetful. We will be forgotten. But God remembers. That is the lesson […]
God’s Stubborness
There is scripture and then there is scripture. There are the words and images that we all share in and then there are the words and images that we have a more personal credence too. Sometimes, often, the two overlap. I have known many people who have what can be called an “expanded Bible” to […]
Deep Water
Deep waters are calling to us. To cast our nets out for a catch of miracles and humanity. Will we do it? Will we go for it? Or will we stay on the shore insisting that there is nothing out there? The nets are empty, there will never be enough. It is an overwhelming thing […]
Parables of Spirit
Pentecost 2018 What is the Kingdom of God like? With what shall we liken it? It is as if a playground were built in a shady place behind a church and a fence were put around it with metal gates. When the day came that the playground was complete and the fence and metal gates […]
Snake Stories
One time we opened a kitchen cabinet and a snake fell out. Well, looky there! A sight to see! A little thing. It had a diamond pattern. It rattled its tail. I thought it was a baby rattler, turns out it was just a juvenile black rat snake. They imitate rattlesnakes, pretty good at it […]
Waking Up
How sweet it is when a trickster gets tricked! When the sneak gets out sneaked! When the wily one gets played. Justice is sweet. These make the best stories. Jacob has the proverbial rude awakening. In a scene straight out of a National Lampoon movie, Jacob wakes up next to the wrong woman. He married […]
God Bless this Mess
July. When gardens go wild, semi feral becomes the natural state of most perennial and vegetable gardens. They get out of hand, brambles, sweet pea, tomato vines, okra, wisteria, and muscadine all conspire to become a primordial jungle in July. Let’s not talk about August. The whole thing is just ripe for interpretation, begging to […]
The Sower
When it comes time for planting pole and bush beans I till the soil and mound it up, dig a trench and carefully space the seeds evenly in the trench pressing the seeds an inch or two in the soil. Then it is up to sunlight and rain. Sowing seed is a careful thing, a […]
Independence Day 2017
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the […]
Ascension Sunday 2017
It’s funny how some things make you go all slack jawed. Hot air balloons still do that for me. Reminds me of one Sunday a few years ago when one popped during the 8 o’clock liturgy. The man fell a thousand feet and landed in a tree just down McDuffie street. He had a broken […]
Great Love
Life is all about transitions. Life is full of beginnings and endings. Life is full of moments of conception and moments of dying. When things come together and when they unravel. We walk around like normal, not seeing the changes going on in the lives around us. Everything looks the same, but someone is dying […]
Lots of Room
Hell and Heaven. Whether we believe in them or not, the ideas, the images, the language is part of who we are. A bad place, a bad situation, pain, punishment, the experience and idea of hell usually involves these things, a place where there is no room, crowded, packed tight, powerless restriction. A good place, […]