Last week’s email message invited you to consider Howard Thurman’s image of the heart’s inner island, on which an altar stands where nothing is placed without the mark of your inner authority. This week, the Gospel reading asks you to consider your inner authority. In his Meditations of the Heart, Howard Thurman writes about “how good it is to center down,” to pause in our daily round of work and life and turn to that inner altar, the place God dwells within us. Thurman write

The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard that we read this Sunday is framed by its “point” in the verse that precedes it (at the end of Matthew chapter 19) and by its concluding sentence: “the last will be first, and the first will be last.” The reign of God, embodied by work in this vineyard, does not conform to our standards and expectations of what we deserve. We derive our expectations from imagining that what we have or receive is our own and not God’s. The challenge

Dear Cathedral Family, Construction related to termite damage repair has changed the locations and some formats for our life together here in the sacred space, but the heart of our shared life continues to beat strong. We gather to grow in following Jesus Christ as Lord and in making His love known to the world. The renewed energy of our physical closeness in the Chapter House space reminds us of our true identity as the Body of Christ and of the new life we share in Him.

Dear Cathedral Family, I am thankful for the enthusiasm and good energy you have brought to our temporary worship space in the Chapter House over the past month. Your flexibility and adaptability have made this transition unexpectedly joyful, and like many of you I’ve heard from, I also enjoy the closeness that we experience while worshiping together there. This is among the greatest of gifts in this time of displacement. The response to our Back to School and Sunday School

Dear Cathedral Family, As all of our students and their teachers and parents brave the first week of school, our prayers are with them! This Sunday we will say special prayers of blessing for the beginning of this new school year and distribute backpack tags that carry a reminder of our love and prayers for all our students. Now that school is back in session, Sunday will also be the beginning of the new program year for our children’s Christian Formation. Sabrina Evans has

Dear Cathedral Family, This Sunday we will begin worshipping in the Chapter House while interior work happens in the nave. Please enter through the garden gates and directly into the Chapter House. Ushers will be on the front sidewalk and at the terrace doors to assist you and to hand you a bulletin. Otherwise, we will worship together as we usually do on the Lord’s Day and then enjoy a time of fellowship together in the servery and the Chapter House vestibule. I am thankfu

Dear Cathedral Family, I am glad to be home after my summer time away, and I am thankful for the presence and ministry of Fr. Tom Heard here with the Cathedral Family during my absence. Junior Wardens past and present, Lewis Golden and Bill Skinner, are doing an excellent job of overseeing the repair work on the church, for which we are all deeply grateful. This Sunday will be our last day of worship in the nave before we move into the Chapter House for the duration of interi

Dear Cathedral Family, Many of us will be coming and going now that summer is arriving, and I want to let you know about what will be going on here at the Cathedral during these summer months. Construction for termite damage repair will begin in the second week of June and continue through the end of September. Crawlspace work across the campus begins June 8, along with interior work in all spaces except the nave. Exterior work for moisture incursion remediation begins on Jun

Dear Cathedral Family, This Sunday following Ascension Day draws us closer to the Day of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Our Gospel this week brings us Jesus’ final prayer on earth, what is called his “High Priestly Prayer.” Jesus prays for the ultimate fulfillment of his mission—to give eternal life to all those the Father has given him. By this Jesus means knowing God and knowing Jesus Christ. Jesus also prays for his disciples, the ones who have received him,

Dear Cathedral Family, The diocesan diaconate ordination last Saturday, May 2 was a wonderful day of celebration. I am thankful for the servant ministry of The Reverends Thomas Heard and Pratt Paterson, music director Dr. Joshua Coble and choir, children’s and family ministry coordinator Sabrina Evans, and all the volunteers who greeted, wrangled, and offered hospitality to our diocesan family on Saturday. You may access pictures here and recordings of the sermon and service

Dear Cathedral Family, Spring is the season of new life and growth in all aspects of created life, in the natural as well as the human worlds. Our young people begin new stages in their journey to adulthood as they close one school year and move toward another, and we witness their growth in life with wonder and thanksgiving. And we pray, both for them and their flourishing and safety and for ourselves to be wise guides and supporters and to keep “home base” open and availa

Dear Cathedral Family, Graduation season is upon us, and this Sunday we will celebrate and pray for our graduates in the Cathedral Family. This will be our annual Senior and Youth Sunday, when our young people assume their roles as ministers and leaders in our worship. We have watched them grow up before our eyes, and the joy and the hope that they inspire in us is one of the greatest gifts of our life together. I know that you will all be praying for them as they launch th

Dear Cathedral Family, This Sunday will be our 21st Annual Cathedral Celebration, with our bishop’s annual parochial visit for confirmation. Confirmation is grounded in baptism, the essential commitment that establishes our lives in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and binds us to Him and to one another and to the whole world in love. We will renew our Baptismal Covenant as we join with five youth and one adult who will be affirming their commitment to Christ in confirmati

Dear Cathedral Family, Following last Sunday’s great Easter Day celebration, this first Sunday after Easter is traditionally known as “Low Sunday.” The “low” doesn’t refer to attendance, but to its place as the Octave Day of Easter—part of the feast, but “to a lesser degree.” The much needed and appreciated rain last Sunday was also kind enough to hold off enough to allow our annual Easter Egg Hunt to take place in the garden. No Easter outfits were ruined in the process!

Dear Cathedral Family, When most church people say “Easter,” they mean the Sunday morning of Easter Day--spectacular flowers, glorious music, fancy clothes, baskets and egg hunts. But Easter is so much more. It is, of course, the whole Great Fifty Days of the Easter season, but before that it is our participation in the whole of God’s saving acts through Jesus Christ. Originally, Easter was celebrated as a single event including both the passion and the resurrection, the

Dear Cathedral Family, The progressively longer Gospel readings of the last few weeks have been a kind of spring training for reading the Passion Gospels of Holy Week. We will begin in earnest when we gather on Palm Sunday. After the short lesson from Matthew in the Liturgy of the Palms, we will move on to a dramatic reading of the Passion narrative from Matthew in the Liturgy of the Word. The full transformative power of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ journey to the Cross lie

Dear Cathedral Family, Vivid, dramatic depictions of signs of hope for the future and for life appear in this Sunday’s readings. Signs in the biblical sense are actions that point to God and that can be rightly understood only when seen through the eyes of faith, with belief. Ezekiel’s visionary prophecy of the Valley of Dry Bones holds out hope for restoration and life for Israel in exile. It is a sign that in returning to following God’s ways, Israel will again know life

Dear Cathedral Family, I am thankful for the service of our wonderful delegation to last weekend’s 55th annual diocesan convention in Pensacola Beach. We had a great time worshiping and learning together with friends from throughout the diocese during the plenary and workshop sessions gathered into the theme “Let There Be Light,” and we had fun socializing together and with friends old and new. You should be especially proud of our Convocation 1 youth representative, our own

Dear Cathedral Family, When we began the first Sunday in Lent with The Great Litany (BCP 148), said with clergy and choir in procession, we were participating in a version of the very first rite of our Church published in English. It was crafted in 1544 by Thomas Cranmer as a special supplication when Henry VIII was at war with Scotland and France, to be used by the people in procession in church. It has been continually revised and included in all English and American editi

Dear Cathedral Family, In our bishop’s sermon here on Ash Wednesday, he invited us to keep a holy Lent as a “reset” from those ways of living that keep us “frozen” or sluggish in our lives as followers of Jesus Christ. Like our digital devices, over time we build up the need to unplug, restart, reset so that we are ready to do the things God calls us to do. Lent is the season set aside in the Church for doing so. The Gospel reading for this first Sunday in Lent focuses on Je