Each year the Archbishop of Canterbury publishes an Ecumenical Christmas Letter to Christians throughout the world. The Most Rev. Justin Welby currently holds that office, and here is a quote from his letter to us in this Christmas season: In many parts of our troubled, uncertain...
Christmas has finally arrived here in the Lone Star State. Last night, the four services at Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston were filled with people who came there on Christmas Eve seeking something — most looking for the manger, many desiring a little peace, and quite a...
Back in 2009, in the days leading up to Christmas, I happened to read in the news about an African-American man in Florida who had just been exonerated after 35 years of wrongful incarceration. His name is James Bain, and he was only 19 years old when he arrived in prison. After DNA testing...
Today is the Third Sunday of Advent. To prepare our hearts to celebrate the birth of Christ, our church will be filled with prayer and praise not only this morning during our services of Holy Eucharist but also in the afternoon during our annual service of Advent Lessons & Carols at 5:00...
Today is Serve Sunday! At the end of our liturgies this morning, we will be commissioned and sent out into the surrounding community as teams, not only to serve our neighbors but also to listen to them. There will even be opportunities between the 9:00 & 11:00 a.m. Choral Eucharists to serve...
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...
