This morning you may have noticed new signage — either permanent or portable, depending on which entrance you used to come into the church or onto our campus. The signage spells out what has been a long-standing policy of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, which prohibits open...
Today’s reading from the Letter to the Colossians refers to Christ as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible . . .” Echoes of that very language are heard in the...
This past weekend, our church held its annual retreat. Due to the hellacious nature of traffic in our area, families arrived at the conference center at different times throughout the afternoon and evening, depending on their route and whether the traffic gods were smiling on them. This year...
Over the course of the next year, I want to encourage us to practice and to nurture a spirit of hospitality here at Palmer. New rooms signs will gradually start to appear around our campus, for example. And now that our church staff is set after a season of retirements and transitions, some...
One of my favorite theologians is Miroslav Volf, an Episcopalian who teaches at Yale Divinity School. Born in Croatia, where his father was a pacifist and a Pentecostal minister, he witnessed both ethnic and religious violence as the former communist Yugoslavia split apart. Yet he knows well the...
Hopefully those who primarily attend the 9:00 a.m. Choral Eucharist on Sundays have noticed the restoration of the psalms to those liturgies since my arrival at Palmer. The psalms are a too often neglected spiritual treasure within Christianity. Yet their words can be our own words not only...
Palmer’s 11:00 AM liturgy on Sundays uses the traditional, poetic language of Rite I. Adorning those beautiful words is the music of Healey Willan as we sing “Glory be to God on high . . .” and “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts . . .” Incense is always used at...
If you walk into the pulpit in the church, you might notice a small brass plaque on top of the railing that is engraved with these words: “. . . we wish to see Jesus.” Those words were spoken to a disciple of Jesus by what the Gospel of John describes as “some Greeks” who...
It had been a busy day at the Sacred Heart Immigration Respite Center in McAllen, Texas. Approximately 65 clients in the morning and another 25, give or take, in the afternoon wave. We had found a clean change of clothes for everyone from the mountains of donations, given everyone a comforting...
