God Makes A Covenant with a Rainbow

· Fr. Barnabas Powell
It’s an old word, but I like it. The word “covenant” is such a significant word for moderns precisely because we have seemed to have forgotten the power of “covenant.” Our society is gripped by hyper-individualism that seems to be intoxicated with the notion of “rights” “privilege” and “power.” This intoxication has created such chaos that even our very way of knowing our own identity has become confused. We think our identity…

The Precious Blood

· Fr. Barnabas Powell
“Blood is thicker than water.” “He makes my blood boil.” We are related by blood.” So many sayings about “blood” and so many common sayings from culture to culture. It seems we humans are hard-wired to “know” the importance of the life fluid we call blood. And yet it would be a mistake to reduce this life-fluid to mere “scientism” of materialistic functionality. There is a mystery in the blood. And that…

2 Paths; One Good, One Bad

· Fr. Barnabas Powell
“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.” This quote by Henry David Thoreau is beautiful. But I have a problem with it since it seems to suggest that any path will do as long as it’s your own path. In fact, it seems our own day has fallen into the false notion that “all paths lead to God.” Of course, nothing could be…

Wise Lips and Foolish Sons

· Fr. Barnabas Powell
My grandmother used to confuse me when she’d comment about a particular friend of my grandfather’s. She’d look at the man as he was driving away from their home after a visit and say “He’s a smart boy but he ain’t got no horse sense.” “Horse sense?” I’d hear that and wonder what in heaven’s name that could mean. It was years later I learned that this was a way of saying that…

Bring Every Thought Captive to Christ – Sunday’s Homily

· Fr. Barnabas Powell 1 Leave a Comment on %s
On this Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas, we are confronted with the mystery of God being BOTH Unknowable AND Knowable, and this mystery invites us to the awesome reality that we can be in true communion with the God Who loves us and comes among us. This spiritual discipline of taming our thoughts allows us to avoid the terrible tragedy of neglecting our Great Salvation. P.S. I know there are focus problems.…

Stolen Water, Secret Bread

· Fr. Barnabas Powell
Oscar Wilde said that “Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.” And yet, we don’t seem to learn from our mistakes very often. Over and over again, we revisit some bad choice either until it kills us or we actually learn to stop doing that. I have a dear friend who grieves a loved one gripped by addiction to narcotics. He once confided in me he was steeling himself…

3 Ways to Embrace Wisdom

· Fr. Barnabas Powell
Whenever you see the term “social justice” you have to realize that this phrase is PACKED with underlying subtext. To ignore this is to be either ignorant or dishonest, neither of which commends itself to being a wise person. Recently there was the usual dust-up over a very public argument over this phrase and it boiled down to what it always boils down to Nature or Nurture. Of course, the wise answer…

4 Traits of True Wisdom

· Fr. Barnabas Powell
I love this quote from Confucius “A man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.” That’s good. You see, it isn’t wrong to not know something; it’s wrong to not care whether you know or not. A wise person is a person who has at least the curiosity to ask questions and learn from past discoveries. But a…

Here’s Your Sign

· Fr. Barnabas Powell 1 Leave a Comment on %s
When I was growing up in a small, Pentecostal church in Atlanta, I was amazed at the number of folks in American Christianity really preoccupied with the “signs of the times.” It seemed that each event in politics or world events “signaled” the “end times.” Fortunately, my pastor was one of the few Pentecostal ministers who simply refused to jump on this bandwagon. He taught us not to be preoccupied with this…

The Childish Fantasy of Fairness

· Fr. Barnabas Powell
I don’t believe in “fairness.” Really! I really don’t believe in it at all. Oh, I get the concept, don’t get me wrong, but I simply don’t believe humans are capable of it. At least not yet, anyway. In fact, the older I get the more I’m convinced that the constant screaming for fairness is a sure sign of both immaturity and bitter envy, neither of which makes for a strong person…