Poems, Sermons and Writings

This is a poem by Edward Hays I have loved his writing for years ASHES TO ASHES:  A PSALM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT Holy Fire of God descend as once you did in times of old, furnace full of searing flames engulfing ancient Mount Sinai in the fullness of God’s presence. Fire Storm of the Holy; wind-sweep your wall of flame over me in a rain Pentecostal love, and burn me to ashes, again. Ages before ages past, my flesh was once the glowing ashes of a dead sun drifting to Earth as star-flakes to become again the stuff of life. No mere dark clay or Earth-dirt am I, for star-studded space was my womb. Ashes to ashes, star dust to star dust, so bury me now in the passion of God’s furnace so I can rise, phoenix-like to a new way of living and loving.  Edward Hays (from Psalms for Zero Gravity)

Luke 2:22-40 “We live in interesting times” as the saying goes - in my lifetime and most of you will also remember - we saw the breakdown of the Berlin wall, we can recall celebrating the news as we watched people dancing on the wall, walking through the checkpoints and dismantling the wall.  Today we are watching the erection of another controversial wall. Walls are sometimes to keep people in - as do prison walls but usually they are about keeping people out and whether it’s keeping people in or out - it is often about a desire for safety, with an element of superiority or importance thrown in.  The structure of Herod’s temple in Jerusalem showed who was important.  There was a series of walls - the outer realm was the court of the gentiles - then there was the court of women (which allowed men and women), then the court of the Israelites - only Jewish men could proceed here or beyond, further in were the courts of the Levites and finally that of the priests - who had