They are no more than carefully woven strands of rope – but they are, literally, bridges in the skies. For centuries the Indians of the Peruvian Andes have linked their villages across mountain ridges and river gorges through a series of long rope bridges that are engineering marvels. The bridges were responsible for the remarkable…
Author: Fr. John Frauenfelder
God in a basket of muffins, hope in bottle of cream
“. . . believe the works [I perform], so that you may realize and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” John 10: 31-42 In her wonderful book Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss, Margaret Renkl recalls the morning after her mother’s sudden death — and…
The Poisonwood Bible
The high priest Caiaphas calls for Jesus’ death. John 11: 45-56 In Barbara Kingsolver’s haunting novel The Poisonwood Bible, Nathan Price is a Baptist minister from Georgia who uproots his family on an ill-advised mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. The Reverend Price is convinced that God has called him to convert Africa, but…
Annunciation of the Lord: With God in the delivery room
”May it be done to me according to your word.” Luke 1: 26-38 I recall a story published in America of Kristen Weston, an obstetrics nurse at Pine Ridge Hospital in South Dakota. She loved nursing and sees her work among her own Lakota people as a vocation. Kristen wrote about the night she realised…
Ash Wednesday: Repentance plus
Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2 A smudge of ashes on our foreheads sets us on another Lenten journey. We receive these ashes aware of our failings and regret for our sins of avarice, of selfishness, of bigotry. But this day calls us to more…
An Easter People, a “resurrection people”?
As I walked with our faith community through the days of Lent with an eye on Easter, our journey’s climax, the idea of being an Easter People or People of the Resurrection confronted me and became even more confronting as I began to read Tomas Halik’s “The Afternoon of Christianity” and the Scripture Readings for…