Ministry
This ministry business has, for me, held rather more disappointments than successes, trying to fix broken bits of the world that simply stay broken. That may be the natural order of God’s world, I don’t know. I’ve learned that grand plans and great intentions are for naught next to the good that comes of spending…
Timing
I went to the museum for a little time alone. Entering the lobby, I saw a couple I knew. Bess was in a wheelchair, Andy was fussing with the machine that validates parking tickets. “Darn thing! Ticket’s jammed!” I helped. We chatted, retrieved their coats, then made our way to the parking deck. Though we…
Notebook
He was a nice guy who had lived a rough life. You could see it in his face and hands. Some of it was his fault but not all of it. He carried a ballpoint pen and notebook in his shirt pocket and I asked him about it. He said, “Hard as I try, I…
Farm
My parents, married in 1947, bought a working farm. They were not farmers and Nature reclaimed the fields. The barn became my mother’s studio and my father’s study. My sister and I grew up in that quiet realm. When our parents died, we sold the farm to a friend. Recently, I returned to the farm…
Seeing the world as it is (from the archives)
When do we first see the world as it is? Not a perfect and well-ordered world but a world untidy, slightly broken and not as we had thought? I was a boy. My mother, father and sister and I were traveling on a train. We had boarded the Pullman car the evening before and slept…
First aid
With the recent spate of gun violence comes a question: “What is to be my response?” Thoughts and prayers alone won’t cut it so I’m considering a one day first aid trauma course. I’d be trained to render immediate care to anyone hurt in any sort of accident … gunshot wounds included. It’s unlikely that…
Injustice
As a boy, I told my father of a perceived injustice, a situation that must straightaway be set to rights. I cannot recall what had me in such a lather, some minor vexation that I had recalibrated into a matter of urgency. I set it all out for my father. I then justified my inability…
Bad leg
After church, a man asks if I’ll drive him home. “Bad leg. Can’t walk.” I ask where he lives. “We got to go over by the highway.” We drive. Then he tells me to get on the highway. At 70 miles an hour he keeps saying, “Almost there … a little farther … keep going…
Autograph
I was ten when my dad took me to see the Indians play the Yankees. Mostly, I wanted a player to sign my baseball. My dad was decidedly skeptical. At seventh inning stretch, an important looking man in a dark suit walked by. I said, “Mister! Sign my baseball!” Without a word, he wrote upon…
Sabbath
Saturday morning, it was the Jewish Sabbath and I, needing a widget, drove to the Big Box Store. I passed people walking to their synagogues … women in full-length skirts, men in felt hats. I saw a young man, perhaps half my age, in a dark suit, a prayer shawl under his jacket. I felt…
Did You Know? – Deacon Josh
The Rev. Josh Butler is a Vocational Deacon in the Diocese of Ohio.
It is the deacon who ends the service, dismissing the congregation to go out in the community to serve. In his Deacon’s Dismissal, Josh offers reflections to strengthen and inspire us in our call to service.
