Under the Fir Tree

Most days in parish life don’t feel dramatic. You answer emails. You sit in another meeting. You make a call. You prep for Sunday. You walk the same hallway. You have the same kinds of conversations with the same kinds of needs. And somewhere in all of that, it’s easy to start believing the lie that the important work of God must be somewhere else. Somewhere bigger. Somewhere more obvious. But the Gospels tell a different story. Jesus seems strangely unhurried in ordinary moments. He notices people by wells, by roads, at tables, in crowds, on the way to somewhere else. And again and again, what looks small becomes holy. A question becomes an invitation. A meal becomes a place of belonging. A passing moment becomes the turning point in someone’s life. Isn’t that comforting? And also confronting? Because many of us live just fast enough to miss the life right in front of us. We move from task to task, solving problems, managing details, trying to keep things afloat. And without realizin...

There’s something stark about it. Lilith Clinic ’s own 2021 opening announcement said its Portland location would begin seeing patients on March 19, 2021. And March 19 is the Church’s Solemnity of St. Joseph . So yes—the timing is real. And the name is real too. Lilith Clinic publicly presents itself as an abortion provider in Portland. From a Christian imagination, that lands with a kind of chill. Because St. Joseph stands for almost the exact opposite spirit. He’s the quiet guardian of Jesus and Mary. He receives life, protects life, shelters life. In Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph is the man who obeys God promptly, takes Mary into his home, and later rises in the night to protect the child from death. So when an abortion business begins on Joseph’s feast, and under the name “ Lilith , ” it does feel more than accidental in a symbolic sense. Not because every calendar overlap’s a secret code. But because names form imagination. Feast days form imagination. And whether they meant it that wa...

They’ve taught us to sing Christmas as though it were a lullaby for respectable people—clean hands, clean hearts, a few candles, a little sentiment to warm the rooms where nobody dies. But the first carol was never written for the comfortable. If you listen closely—closer than the choir dares—you’ll hear iron under the melody, the scrape of a chain dragged across stone. “Peace on earth,” yes. But peace doesn’t arrive like a parcel; it arrives like a king who's decided to be poor, and every tyrant in the house hears His footsteps. A child cries in a manger and the universe flinches. Not because infants are rare—every alley has heard their hunger—but because this one’s cry is an order given to darkness: Unhand them! The world’s air, heavy with old lies, suddenly takes on the sharpness of winter. Hell's always preferred us asleep. Drugged by routine, by shame, by the dull certainty that we're what we’ve done and will never be anything else. And then— This night—God slips into ...

A reflection occasioned by Archbishop Sample’s recent advent homily . Advent always opens with an alarm clock, not a lullaby. The Church starts her year by talking not about babies and carols, but about an arrival that will split history open: Christ coming in glory, and Christ already at the door of our own lives. It’s a strange kindness. We’d rather ease into December with nostalgia and soft lights, but the liturgy stands in the doorway and says to us, to you: “Stay awake.” Advent isn’t decorative waiting for Christmas presents; it’s training for judgment—and I’m trying to help you learn how to stand there with your eyes open. As the years pile up, that command ("Stay awake") lands differently. There comes a moment—an age, a number, and someday a card in the mail—when you realize you have more yesterdays than tomorrows. I feel that more sharply than you do right now. You’re still at the stage of building a life, sketching plans, assuming time; I’m beginning to count what’s ...

Our age mistakes sovereignty for sanity. We're told to be authors of ourselves, to curate identities with the care of a museum and the speed of a market. The result is a sovereignty that feels like solitary confinement: a self-managed, self-financed, self-justified life—efficient, anxious, and airless. Oppressive autonomy is not the lack of options but the obligation to be the final court of appeal for everything we are. The mirror becomes a tribunal. # # # Adoration is the rebellion that doesn't shout. It's not flattery directed upward or superstition disguised as manners. Adoration is simply attention consenting to be captivated; the mind kneeling without humiliation. It names a relation where the self isn't abolished but re-proportioned by what's greater than it. In adoration, we trade the closed loop of self-reference for a line of sight. Picture a simple scene: a stale room, a window stuck with paint. You lever it open; cold air shoulders in, dust lifts from th...

Today reminds us God creates ex nihilo . He gives being without need or rival. That means the dead haven’t slipped into nonbeing, because their being was never self-powered; it remains held by the Giver. The rival story—death as a final shutoff—confuses creaturely limits with a canceled existence. Imagine a name carried on warm breath: invisible, yet borne by a living voice. When we pray for the departed, we aren’t recalling the absent; we’re consenting to the One whose speaking holds them now. Today keeps the church honest about love, too. It names the ordinary dead—our grandmothers and godfathers and fathers and wives and friends, the neighbor from the third pew over, the child we only held once—and sets them before God without varnish. Not heroes in stained glass, but persons we still miss. From a folded list on the ambo we learn again that belonging doesn’t end at the cemetery gate; it widens there. To the Communion of Saints: the mystery of the living and dead in Christ sharing li...

We inhabit a world that devours its own breath. The street spits steam; the market jerks like a hunted animal; headlines flare, crackle, and fall to gray before noon. Modernity swears motion will acquit us, that speed outruns rot. Look into the gutter after rain—oily, prismatic, unclean—snaring a torn sun like a thief who can’t spend what he steals. The shimmer kisses, then abandons; we’re left with dripping rubbish and a clock that never blinks. Name it plainly: appetite without hunger. The same fire that dazzles also chokes; it spends our blood and never pays it back. Flux makes a racket; it can’t make a soul. Being isn’t a scramble we win; it’s a gift we blush to accept. Against the snarling river stands the Craftsman who called the waters good and the day very good. See, at first light, a wooden door: poor grain glowing from the east, hinges steady, a handle cool as a promise. Don’t call it escape; it’s interruption—mercy with weight, stopping our sprint and saying, “enough.” Truth...

Each year, the Easter Vigil offers the Church a cosmic interruption. It's the night in which time cracks open and eternity pours through. And this year, Archbishop Sample’s homily reminded us—quietly but unmistakably—that the Resurrection is not a metaphor. It's a rupture. A healing. A mission. We're not permitted to be ungrateful for the miracle of existence. The Most Important Night—Yet the Most Overlooked The Easter Vigil is the crown jewel of Christian liturgy. But in our time, its brilliance is hidden not by persecution, but by indifference. It begins late. It runs long. It is ritual-heavy and slow. For many, it's exhausting. Yet perhaps its very inconvenience is the beginning of its sanctity. In an age that worships efficiency and comfort, the Easter Vigil stands as a silent protest. It doesn't entertain. It doesn't flatter our schedules. It waits. It builds. It dares to make us linger at the edge of the tomb. Its strangeness isn't a liabi...