“Will the Interpretation-Understanding Circle be Unbroken?” © Thoughts on the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 8, 2018 by Rev. Jim Ryan, jimryan6885@gmail.com Today’s 2nd Reading familiarly recounts Paul’s mention to the Corinthians of his “thorn in the flesh” that stood for him as a humiliating weakness. It seems to refer to a disability, perhaps…
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“The No-Trick Surplus Brought on by Balance” Thoughts on the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 1, 2018 by Rev. Jim Ryan, jimryan6885@gmail.com St. Paul has recently been quoted by the Attorney General to justify the obscene policy of separating children, including infants, from their parents. It is unlikely that today’s passage from St. Paul…
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“7:47 and 1/3”© by Rev. Jim Ryan, jimryan6885@gmail.com In another time of autocratic rule, when those who had the title of Peoples’ Representatives stood by and did nothing, the Nazi government followed Hitler’s lead from his tome, Mein Kampf, and engaged in the practice of the Big Lie. In 1951, following what…
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“Thoughts on the 50th Anniversary of the Loss of RFK”© by Rev. Jim Ryan, jimryan6885@gmail.com Could there have been a more simple time? Remember? Remember. Well, there was the war. Never again would a war be so long, right? And the riots. And discrimination. And family conversations- some would say disputes, some would say outright…
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“Corpus Christi past, present, future. Will liturgy survive?” © Thoughts on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, June 3, 2018 Rev. Jim Ryan, jimryan6885@gmail.com This year’s Solemnity of Corpus Christi finds me wondering about the future of liturgy. Many of us have memories of processions, incense, and multiple altars on which monstrances were placed. Back in…
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“When there’s no awe in awesome and there’s nothing absolute about absolutely.” © Thoughts on 4th Sunday of Easter, April 22, 2018 by Rev. Jim Ryan, jimryan6885@gmail.com So, when you select your entrée from the menu and you tell your server your choice, has it happened to you that the server says, “awesome”? Or, when…
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On Thursday evening, April 4, 1968, at approximately 7:30 PM, I was one of two white folks at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Washington, DC headquarters on the corner of 14 th & U Streets NW. Built in 1907 for the Fourteenth Street Savings Bank – “THE ONLY NIGHT BANK IN WASHINGTON” – there…
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This was our First Reading at this year’s Easter Vigil Service – another take on creation! A New Origin Story by Jean Houston From what Cosmic garden of Eden did you emerge? And toward what destiny are you pointed? Perhaps now, as the ground of the known shifts beneath our feet, what we need in…
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“We Wait on Fire”© by Rev. Jim Ryan, jimryan6885@gmail.com We are waiting on fire. We Christians have two days before the Easter Vigil to get ready for the fire next time. Of course, the joke is on us because the fire has already come. We, frail and faulty as we…
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“Love in a Letter”© by Rev. Jim Ryan, jimryan6885@gmail.com My father was a letter-writer, a skill honed during his six years away from home from 1932-38. This was the time he spent as a member of the Redemptorist Order of priests and brothers – his life as a Frater (Latin for brother). In…
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