Tomorrow, Saturday, November 30, is the Feast of St. Andrew. Andrew is traditionally the first saint remembered in the new church year, and the season of Advent always begins on the Sunday closest to his feast day. The stories about Andrew in the Gospel of John emphasize his gift for making connections between others and Jesus - he was a great networker! He was the first of the disciples to follow Jesus, having learned of him through John the Baptist. (As a result, the Orthodox Church have named Andrew Protokletos, or “First-called.”)...

Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints, and we will have a particularly festive marking of it at our Evensong commemorating the 175th anniversary of Church of the Holy Apostles tonight (Friday) at 7 pm. We will also remember All Saints’ Day, and its related day, All Souls’ (or the Commemoration of All Faithful Departed) this Sunday, November 3....

When she was eight years old, my niece Audrey asked me the very important theological question, “Does God have pets?” Now, she had an ulterior motive for this question, as she was angling to be allowed to get a dog (this was before Penny, and then Hugo, came into her life!) – but nevertheless, it is an intriguing question. I responded, “Yes, I think WE are all God’s pets.”....

Today I came across this “Thought for the Day” on a poetry website (https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com): Don’t resent the work. It gives you strength to stand whole and silent before the Mystery. - Ivan M. Granger Granger may be talking about a more significant kind of work, but I immediately thought of all the little things that I resent doing each day. This is the stuff I “have to” do, the “shoulds” -- much of it just the tedious things in work and life that we all have to attend to. Things like those emails I have to return, the doctor’s appointment I should make, and the research I need to do in order to fix my misbehaving computer....

The comedian John Oliver addressed the recent mass shootings before his regular show aired Sunday night. He began like this: “When it comes to gun control, I know it can feel like everything’s been said before. In fact, even pointing out “everything’s been said before” has been said before. In fact, even pointing out the fact that “ ‘everything’s been said before’ has been said before” has been said before. But while the depressingly familiar numbness that you may be currently feeling can help you handle the pain in the short term, in the long term it can actually be a real problem because unless something hurts as much as it’s supposed to, nothing gets done about it.”....

Happy Summer! I am actually on vacation -- I wrote this meditation last week before I left. I hope I'm having a fun and relaxing time! And I hope that you will get some time off as well this summer, even if it is just a long weekend or two....

Starting this past Monday, the Church entered its longest season of the liturgical year -- often called Ordinary time. Technically speaking, it isn’t actually a season, but rather the time between the major seasons of the church calendar. The longest stretch of Ordinary time reaches from the Monday after the Feast of Pentecost (June 10 this year) all the way until the Saturday before the first Sunday of Advent....

As I write today I am at the annual Priests’ Conference of the Diocese. Most of the priests of the Diocese of New York have gathered together with our bishops for three days of fellowship, education, and relaxation. This year we are in the Poconos and it is beautiful, if a bit on the rainy side!We have had a guest speaker named Jonathan Merritt. You might remember an opinion piece he wrote last year for the Sunday Week in Review section of the New York Times titled “It’s Getting Harder to Talk About God,”  and his most recent book is called “Learning to Speak God from Scratch.”...