Here’s a sermon for you from November 6, 2022, preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal in San Rafael. Enjoy! On Friday, my husband James and I sat across the table with a new friend and our real estate agent. It was a time of remembering: remembering back to a little over a year and a half ago when our landlord informed us that she was going to sell the house. We needed to move. It was my birthday, that much I... Read more
Here’s a sermon for you, preached on February 12, 2023 at St. Paul’s Episcopal in Oakland, California. Enjoy! A month or so ago, Garden Club met on our front porch. Garden Club is just as it sounds: a club for people who love gardens, who live in our neighborhood. I’d go on these walks with Rufus, the dog, and always noticed the front yards with raised vegetable beds or succulent displays, perfectly-trimmed rosebushes or walkways lined with tulips. Sometimes I’d... Read more
Here’s a sermon for you from October 23, 2022, preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal in San Rafael. Eventually I’ll pen some regular articles again, but short sermons always feel appropriate for squeaky topics like humility, wouldn’t you say? Enjoy! — Ah, humility. In our house, the tendency to prove yourself better than your brother often happens, so much so that the words “one-upping” have become a regular part of my vocabulary. “Today, during lunch recess kickball, I kicked the ball... Read more
This is a sermon given at St. Paul’s Episcopal in San Rafael on March 27, 2022. Although we’re not in the middle of Lent anymore, this whole idea of interruptions always feels rather appropriate if you ask me. Enjoy! — Here’s the truth: double-takes happen. They happen when we’re walking down the street, and we see a friend we haven’t seen in a decade: is that really her, him, them? Double take. They happen when the popping beauty of spring... Read more
Here’s another sermon given at St. Paul’s Episcopal in San Rafael on May 22, 2023. Feels rather evergreen to me, when it comes to the message; I trust it might be the same for you. Enjoy! — Yesterday, my boys and I loaded up the foldable wagon: camping chairs, blanket, towels, soccer ball, football, juice boxes, sparkle waters, chips, gluten-free hotdog buns, sunblock, cell phone, keys, and a book, just in case. We had everything we might need in the... Read more
This is a short sermon given at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on June 13, 2022. Seeing as Oakland’s second annual Guns to Gardens event is coming up this Saturday, it felt appropriate to feature this week! — Yesterday morning, I stood in the sun and in the shade in the At Thy Word Church parking lot in Oakland. The church is in a rough part of town, I’m not gonna lie. Chain link and wrought iron fences dot the front... Read more
A question came across my desk the other day: When did Christianity become the world’s largest religion? For me, I don’t know if the when matters as much as the how? What does it mean to instead dig into the unconventional way Christianity came to surpass all other major world religions? First, some context: Christianity is an approximately two-thousand-year-old religion, based entirely on the life and teachings of Jesus. Christianity is made up of the Roman Catholic church, Eastern Orthodox... Read more
A sermon from March 13, 2022, given at St. Paul’s Episcopal in San Rafael: Sometimes I secretly call my son’s soccer team the Underdogs. They’re all heart. They go out there, emotions written on their sleeves. They chase after the ball. They epitomize the term, “bruiser.” They do these tricky things with their feet, when they have the ball – it’s kind of like kick to the back, no, to the side, nope, around my left foot, and look, I... Read more
A sermon from October 10, 2021, given at St. Paul’s Episcopal in San Rafael: Good morning! Truth: my family spent approximately 6,395 hours in the last week playing Monopoly. We have also occasionally eaten food, slept, done our homework (and our “grown up work”), read books, played soccer and walked the dog, but for the most part we have built houses on the orange properties, prayed for a double when we landed in jail – “Please God, let me have... Read more
This Sunday, if you didn’t know, is National Back to Church Sunday. Popularized by an organization of the same name out of Colorado Springs, they have “set aside the third Sunday in September as the day to encourage everyone to attend a Bible-based church in their area and for church leaders to create a welcoming, inviting environment for their visitors” since 2009. Now I, as you may well know, identify as Episcopalian, and while Episcopal churches have their own “homecoming”... Read more
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