The Resurrection shows me God’s forgiveness

I realized this a few Easters ago, but it returns to me each Easter since then.

Jesus came into our world fully human and fully God to show us how much God loves us through his forgiveness of all our refusals to put God first in our lives. It wasn’t so much his death on the cross that shows me the depth of his love and forgiveness. It is in his resurrection. How many of us, were we tried unfairly, sentenced too severely, and tortured to death if we could return to this world would rain down revenge on each person that participated in our trial, torture, and death?

Jesus’ forgiveness of us after the Resurrection shows me how much God loves and forgives us for all of our egotism, self-righteousness, and lack of true love of God and true love of our neighbors as, or more so, than our love for ourselves.

Jesus shows us yet again by his actions. This time he shows us by his actions after the resurrection.

Ship Express because it’s Easter?

It’s unusual. We have shipped more orders via Express Mail for assured delivery by Easter this week than we shipped for assured delivery the week before Christmas.
What causes this? Does Christmas receive so much hype that we don’t forget to send gifts early and Easter receives so little recognition that some of us forget to finalize purchases that we need for Easter?
We are glad to help our customers with Express Mail shipping. Still, we fret over the excess costs the purchases incur by needing to ship them by the more expensive and faster shipping of Express Mail.

The Women's Convocation preparations

The past few weeks Nancy has been diligently preparing for our book display for the Intercommunity Peace and Justice Women’s Convocation V, April 12th and 13th. Catholic women religious plan and present a fabulous program of speakers for their convocation. This is not an annual event. It happens about once every four years. It is held in one of the largest conference venues in the metro Seattle area. Two thousand women are expected to attend.
We will be displaying and selling more than 100 book titles for the 15 well-known authors and speakers on women’s issues. The logistics for us are significant.
It is a women’s event so our booth will be staffed by women while the male staff members of this ministry-which-is-the-store will handle the duties of our bricks and mortar and online store, as well as some of the heavy lifting and delivery of the cartons of books.
It is an interesting and exciting time for us, even during this Holy Week.
After the event I hope to report on what I hear from those who attend about the speakers and some of their thoughts.

One body, different parts

Nancy and I visited our son and his family in southern California this past weekend. Great visit. Wonderful family time together.
It is always enlivening to worship in a different Episcopal congregation. They live and worship with a special emphasis due to their location and the presence of many military families that my home congregation does not. The different congregations are definitely “one body in Christ,” and we are different parts of the same body. Same blood, same "DNA" so to speak, but our bodies react differently to the different environments in which we live.
We are not frozen in one identical liturgy, one liturgy that could become boring and less meaningful. To me the way that we can adapt the liturgy to fit our place in "the body" seems most natural. And certainly our God who is more than we can describe, know, or imagine, is used to our varieties and our varieties of worship.

Children's sermon on the Prodigal Son

We have seen that children’s religious books and bibles take big life issues and describe the essence of them in simple terms. Adults can often learn important information by reading children’s religious books bibles. So too for a good children’s sermon.
Click here to view a video of what we think is a good children’s sermon on the Prodigal Son that carries and important theological precept for all of us. It is preached to the students at St. John's Episcopal Church and Day School in Chula Vista CA.

An acolyte video

Having worked with young people and in the Church this video by and about acolytes really tickles me. Perhaps you will enjoy it too.

Books at a liturgy workshop

Last Saturday Nancy and I displayed and sold some books at a local workshop for clergy on the topic of liturgy. It was very good to visit with the clergy for whom remains important to keep studying the liturgy to see how it can be kept fresh and alive. Actually, those dedicated indiviuals were quite inspiring.


That is a description of the ministry-which-is-the-store. As for the business-which-is-the-store, there was insufficient sales at the workshop to pay for the extra help we needed at the store so that we could attend the workshop with the books, let alone to pay for our time to order the books and attend our display. This is a continuing discernment that we work with. Do they pay for themselves? Usually not. Should we remain involved in them? Yes.