The Daily Office Continues His Name is hallowed. Given that God belongs to all who seek,Given that re-fathering by God in Jesus is always on offer,Given that God reigns in the heavenly throne roomIn the vastness of the created universe,In the intimacy of the skies above and the air we breathe –His Name is hallowed  -- it could not be otherwise.

(from yet another retired pastor) Advent, at least as far as the assigned Gospel readings were concerned, always felt backwards to me. We begin at the end, with signs of the end of the age and Jesus’ return, and we end at the beginning with either the Annunciation, Joseph’s dream, or the Visitation. In the prior lectionary (found in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and going back to the 1662 Prayer Book from the Church of England), the annual Gospel reading for the First Sunday of Advent was Matthew’s version of the Triumphal Entry and the cleansing of the temple.

Our Father -- Where? Our Father who art in heaven … and just where is that?And what has some heavenly Being – wherever He is have to do with me – earthboundand suffocating in my own technological waste products? But the word in the prayer is NOT HEAVEN that’s only a lazy translation.It is HEAVENS – plural – and that means something,

Our Father … But if “Our” is problematic,“Father” is a veritable minefield. Did Jesus know what a can of worms he opened? Was Joseph so loving, so present, so formative that Father was a safe image? Maybe Jesus’ experience of life was unlike ours, whose fathers were a mixture of iron and clay, like ours, whose fathers were present and loving though never perfect,

Our Father who art… wait What? Our? Who is this “Our?” Who am I signing up with? There was this angry Catholic / Protestant / Orthodox / Evangelical / Anglican / (fill in the blank) so certain that those who weren’t on his (her?) way were headed for Hell, with or without a handbasket. Is that person included in “Our?”

This week’s post, updated from a few years back, is continuing the Glacial Transformation theme. I’ve also prepared a post on human priestliness, tentatively titled “The Priesthood We Cannot Escape.” It’s about 60% complete which means it could be posted by Friday, or maybe sometime in early November. Before the advent of smartphones and social media I was perfectly capable of distracting myself into immobility.

Consistently Inconsistent As there is (and always will be) a certain randomness in both the frequency and content of my writing, I think it best to let my small band of subscribers and followers know that there is a kind of method to this chaos. First, there’s ADHD. It’s become a popular diagnosis, or perhaps it’s just that that particular neuro configuration prompts people to write online.

(Yes, again!) Here's my latest on the Apprentice Priest substack

Published on Substack 30 July 2025

Part 1 The new post on Substack:

Read it on the Apprentice Priest Substack

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA My latest musings

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA My latest musings

A Brief Explanation

It started with me a long time ago and it's still going on.

Follow this link for a new post on Substack:

Being retired, one has enough time to get into mischief, or in my case, into Substack. This is something thrown together quickly after reading too many Substack posts on the decline of the churches…

Being retired, one has enough time to get into mischief, or in my case, into Substack. This is something thrown together quickly after reading too many Substack posts on the decline of the churches. It's not that churches aren't declining. It's more that the struggles of the institutional church distract us from the deeper reality of Church. (Click below)

It seemed an inauspicious beginning. Last November, in an effort to revive this long dormant blog, I offered a simple post on being an Apprentice of Jesus. That post did not contain a single reference to any spiritual disciplines. The omission was not intentional, but it wasn’t an oversight either. A vague sense of discomfort plagues me when I start to write or teach about spiritual disciplines, rules (or ways) of life, or any of the elements contained in an otherwise welcome renewal of interest in spiritual formation.

It isn't my age. In fact, I can barely remember being 46. But it was on this day 46 years ago, in 1978, that I was ordained a priest in the "One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church." At least that's what the ordination certificate says. Although Evergreen, Colorado, has a number of excellent coffee shops and some remarkable brew pubs, I'm not expecting any anniversary discounts today.

I would love a day to come when this article, first written eight years ago, would be irrelevant to our times. Unfortunately, that day is not today. The following article was written for the parish newsletter of Trinity Episcopal Church, Greeley, Colorado in 2016. I posted it again in 2020. I thought about updating it then and now, but aside from references to my former parish and the “Trinity Way of Life” it is unfortunately as relevant in 2024 as it was in 2020, and 2016, and every year in between.