Rev. Valerie's Reveille

I remember my first visit to a planetarium.  It was a school trip to the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History in New York City, which was exciting enough. And yet the opportunity to sit in these weird seats while the sky spun around me was truly awesome.  I recall feeling really small after that experience (and indeed every time I’ve been to a planetarium since) because the program reminded me of just how small a part I am in an extremely large universe.  It puts things into a perspective that is helpful.  It doesn’t diminish my cares and occupations to seem meaningless, but it does remind me of just how big God is.  God is the Creator of all – ALL – and I doubt we have even scratched the surface of what that means. In the latter part of the Season after Pentecost, we will take the opportunity for the next 5 weeks to highlight in our liturgy what it means to be in relationship with the Creator, what position humans have in Creation, and how w...

Today, September 21 st , is a red-letter day because it is the Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist.  Or at least it is on my Church Calendar. On my more secular calendar, the notation is that today is the U.N. International Day of Peace. I have a feeling that both events will go unnoticed by the majority of people today, but that shouldn’t prevent us, as people of faith, to celebrate and draw a connection between them. The tradition of making important words stand out in red ink started in medieval time, and they became known as rubrics .  For those of you who are real Church geeks, you will know that we also call all the instructions in the Book of Common Prayer about how to offer liturgies are also called rubrics , however in most modern copies of the BCP, they are italicized and not written in red (although I have seen some versions that do use red!).  The practice of using red to signify something important continued with the printing press, and it is a...