I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, with time to celebrate with family and friends.  As usual, I joined my brother, Will, and his family for Christmas and, like Simeon who took Jesus into his arms, I was blessed to hold my latest great niece, Whitney, once again.  It was so precious to see her, now two months old.  I’ll be baptizing her here next Saturday; what a privilege that will be!  This is a very sacred time of the year as we reflect on the great mystery of […]

Have you ever noticed that we human beings have a seemingly infinite capacity to complicate things?  It’s like we have a built-in aversion to the simple.  We often take the simplest situation and we make it a complicated affair.  As they say, we make mountains out of molehills.  And, when we do, we often miss the real point.  But, when you get the heart of it, often the greatest experiences of life, and the greatest insights, have a way of turning out to be very simple.  Take Christmas, for example.  […]

It is so good to see all of you here this evening, on this the most holy of all nights.  And, so many of you are here as families, parents, grandparents and children.  So, you all remember the moment when it was time to name your child.  It was an exciting time, to be sure.  We just had this in our family as one of my nephews and his wife were preparing to give birth.  They kept the name secret; we didn’t learn his name until he was born.   And, […]

I hope you like our nativity display here in front of the altar.  It really is splendid and I thank all of you who contributed to our Christmas flowers special collection and those who helped to put it up on Friday.  You will notice, however, that the central figure – the infant Jesus – is missing from the manger; he won’t arrive until Christmas and we’re still in Advent for a few more hours.  And so, like in the Wizard of Oz, I say, “Pay no attention to the man […]