Summer Sundays

Phyllis Tickle 9-14-2008

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But the house and the occupant do share one commonality: they both will someday cease to be. Both will pass away. The occupant, who was not the house, will die; and the house, who was not the occupant, will burn down or molder down or be torn down or undergo some other such ending. All will be gone. All the pieces and parts of our lovely story gone into dust and ashes. All of them gone as pieces, anyway.

What is and always will be is what neither the house nor the occupant, as separate entities, ever was. What is and is ever to be is home — the joy-giving, rest-filled, and light-bearing presence within experience of the reality of "home." What is, is the translation of passing tangibles into the eternal. What is, is the fusing of occupant and house into one that is neither, but both together. What is, is a story about an occupant and a house that, in truth, is really a story resurrection bodies and the kingdom of God, as in "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as in Heaven." 

Phyllis Tickle 9-07-2008

Summer Sundays with Phyllis Tickle

I am going to preach this morning. Actually, in all probability I will be preaching by the time you read this. I will not be away from home in some alien pulpit, though, but at home in my own parish and among those whom I love. I won't preach, of course, [...]

Phyllis Tickle 8-31-2008

Summer Sundays with Phyllis Tickle

Christ Episcopal Church in Ponte Vedra, Florida, is the kind of church every pastor, rector, or preacher dreams of. It’s got children running about everywhere. It’s building yet another parking lot for reasons that are [...]

Phyllis Tickle 8-24-2008

Summer Sundays with Phyllis Tickle

I'm not much for talismans or religious tokens in the usual sense of those things. I wear around my neck every day of my life a chain with four emblems or medals on it. One is a Celtic cross given me on my 65th birthday by my favorite college chum from more than a half-century ago. One is [...]

Phyllis Tickle 8-17-2008

Summer Sundays with Phyllis Tickle

peachesThere's a great deal of conversation these days about the nature of human consciousness and, as a related issue, about the true definition of "human" and how it can be best described. There's so much such conversation, in fact, that it is essentially impossible (especially [...]

Phyllis Tickle 8-03-2008

Summer Sundays with Phyllis Tickle

Next Wednesday is the Feast of the Transfiguration. What that means is that next Wednesday is a major holy day for Christians like me who fall into what is commonly referred to as the "liturgical" category of the faith. That rather ponderous label is a [...]

Phyllis Tickle 7-20-2008

Summer Sundays with Phyllis Tickle

JesusA Sunday or two ago, I made mention of -- more to the truth, wrote a whole

Phyllis Tickle 7-13-2008

Summer Sundays with Phyllis Tickle

Tomorrow is Bastille Day. We Americans don't take much notice of that these days, but once there was a time when we did. Once was the time, especially as the storm clouds of World War II were gathering over us, when school children and working folk alike [...]

Phyllis Tickle 7-06-2008

Summer Sundays with Phyllis Tickle

July 4 weekend! Now this is a holiday! We won't have another one until Labor Day, but that doesn't even matter right now. What matters is that this is the last day of a glorious three days of blessed interruption. Thank goodness for all such favors.

I [...]

Phyllis Tickle 6-22-2008

Summer Sundays with Phyllis Tickle

Welcome to summer. Officially and totally summer in the Northern Hemisphere. It's certifiably summer by every means of our accounting, be it psychological or [...]

Phyllis Tickle 6-15-2008

Summer Sundays with Phyllis Tickle

Officially speaking and despite what we may all be thinking about the June heat wave the nation is plowing its way through right [...]