Years ago, as a newly ordained Episcopal priest, I received my share of pastoral calls to make.
Often, these calls involved visiting memory care clients.
Often, these calls involved people who wouldn’t know they didn’t know me. The staff called in a local pastor when they felt “something like that” might be helpful.
And I learned something I have held onto all these years.
Today’s Gospel reminds me of that truth. In a teaching moment with his disciples, Jesus taught them how to pray.
If you’re a church regular, or maybe attended reliably as a child, the words Jesus offered a couple of thousand years ago are still in your heart. If someone starts them off, more than likely you find you can step into them as though it was yesterday.
Embedded in our souls as they are, these words can often come from memory care receivers—even when they cannot remember loved ones.
Old, familiar words, learned years ago through repetition, come rolling out of us as needed.
When my father was in the last days of a long cancer journey, he would say very vile things to my mother. Long, laborious recollections of her failures. Hurtful, biting things spewed forth from him. Sometimes things that were true, sometimes things that were not true, simply the result of a brain that was dying.
Sometimes she would call me in the middle of those tirades. Sometimes that helped, but I wasn’t always available. So, I asked what she does when she couldn’t get me by phone.
“I say the Lord’s Prayer, over and over. It calms me down.”
Over and over, written on hearts decades earlier, this prayer continues to console and protect:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
The late Trappist monk Thomas Merton was a prolific writer. And his writing has been a source of comfort to me no matter what is going on in the world, or simply to me in my life. Consider the following:
Speak words of hope.
Be human in this most inhuman of ages.
Guard the image of man,
for it is the image of God.
What I found novel and most helpful in this quote is the reminder that even the person who has harmed me the most—that person—deserves respect and care because there is more to him than his treatment of me. He, just as I am, just as you are, warrants guarding because we bear the image of God within us. It may be buried deep, crusted over, denied more than once, but it is there.
Here’s another Merton gift:
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.
Reminders such as these serve notice that each of us presents a bit of God to those whom we meet.
I hope that anyone looking at me can recognize, if only briefly, some resemblance to the source of any goodness they see.
This morning, I was quickly overtaken by three stories:
● Michele Obama receiving criticism for describing current state of affairs as a “janky” period?
● Trump’s request to have the Nuclear Code?
● And, learning today the Trump administration is stopping mandatory flu vaccines for the U.S. military?
As regards Michelle Obama’s remark, I also find everything coming out of Washington these days to be “janky.”
True, I had to look up the word. But it’s more or less what I would imagine:
From Google: “It often implies that an object is shaky, faulty, or a ‘cobbled together, makeshift solution. Common examples include broken technology, rundown cars, or poor-quality, unreliable items. Synonyms include shoddy, sketchy, junky, shaky, or flimsy.”
Now, thanks to Michelle Obama, I have a nifty, new word to describe current affairs.
Moving on, as a child of the Cold War era, nothing can be more horrifying than The Code falling into the President’s hands—any president. But especially this president and his janky administration.
Moving on to flu vaccines. Secretary Hegseth says the removal of mandated vaccines is a means of democratizing the individual military experience.
Is that really what we need for the military? Sure, if there’s medical reason to forgo the shot, I’m sure there’s always been provision for an exception there.
So what is it the secretary has really accomplished?
There comes a time when we cannot deny that Donald Trump is unfit to serve this country.
He isn’t our crazy Uncle Donnie who the family rolls out at special events.
The whole family is on alert and, at the first hint of trouble, Uncle Donnie is led away, smiling and waving with his free arm.
Mostly, this Uncle Donnie is harmless, though definitely someone capable of bringing shame at any moment.
But whatever “Uncle Donnie” has done that harms those he theoretically cares about, it doesn’t begin to touch the dangerous, embarrassing, dishonorable, mean-spirited antics of the other Donnie, you know, the one in the White House.
I don’t know if any remnants remain of the USA’s better days as the good guys and gals. But we have prayed that the President’s better angels would lead him to the right things.
Well, I fear the better angels are fighting an uphill battle against greed, wealth, mistreatment of people, illness, and starting a war with provocation or congressional approval.
And now, he apparently thinks he is God. What can we do?
As a private citizen, neither you nor I can launch the two remedies available under the law: The 25th Amendment, and Impeachment.
But we can create a clamor so thunderous it cannot be denied.
If you do not believe how out of touch with reality this Uncle Donnie is, consider the picture he posted and has since taken down: Him as Jesus, or a Jesus wannabe, hovering over a man’s hospital bed.
That is a serious distortion of reality. We all know it. But does he? That is the really worrisome concern.
A good friend of mine posted a favorite poem of his on Facebook. It is also a favorite of mine: Wendell Berry’s, Practice Resurrection.
Here, I may have given a wrong impression. While this poem often stands on its own it actually is the ending of a larger piece: Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.
Practice resurrection. What does that look like? For me it means doing the things that breathe life into duty, bring cheer into disarray, give meaning to my own life, and to another’s. Reaching out to another person, offering hope to those grown hopeless, bringing food to those who hunger. And, sometimes, we are the people in need of an encouraging word.
I celebrate Berry’s work for offering us the term of practice resurrection. It reminds me that, like many worthy efforts in life, we are given the very shareable gift of resurrection.
Enjoy the words:
So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it.
Today, a good number of people ordained in the Episcopal Church will head to Phoenix for the Renewal of Vows service. I will be among them.
The service is paired with receiving Holy Oils blessed by the Bishop for use in churches throughout the coming year.
This is not only a local event. Across the country, deacons, priests, bishops attend such a service annually, many of those services traditionally occurring on the Tuesday in Holy Week. This year, that falls on March 31.
This is serious business, yet not grim. It is a joyous opportunity to remember not only our day of ordination, when promises were made, but also the intervening years of serving God’s people, both when it has been uplifting and also when it has borne the weight of tears.
This service we are called to provide is a twenty-four-seven calling. Over time and as the new wears off, we may find our spirit threatened.
But then we receive the Holy Week call to renew the vows made at our ordaining and we happily respond as we did then: I will.
Tales of a preeminent sled dog race can either celebrate or denigrate this long-standing Alaska event.
As a longtime dog lover, I can see this annual event two ways. A celebration of the dog-human relationship, or a misuse of the trust dogs so easily invest in us.
Either way, I can’t turn away from a couple of amazing accounts nestled in history books.
First, some news from the 2026 race that ended on March 17, when Jessie Holmes won his second consecutive Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Nome, Alaska. The former reality TV star completed the roughly 1,000-mile course in nine days, seven hours, and 32 minutes. As this year’s winner, Holmes received an $80,000 prize.
Now for a couple of did-you-knows:
Saving lives with sleds
In the 1920s, before vaccines, there were 100,000–200,000 diphtheria cases and 13,000–15,000 deaths in the US each year.
The risk made its way all the way to Alaska. While a successful serum was available, getting it to Alaska was not always possible.
The 1925 Great Race of Mercy saw 20 mushers and give or take 150 dogs relay diphtheria antitoxin 674 miles in 5.5 days to save Nome, Alaska, from an outbreak.
Facing -50°F temperatures and blizzards, teams led by Togo and Balto delivered the serum, inspiring the annual 1,000-mile Iditarod sled dog race.
After a vaccination program was introduced in the late 1940s, cases dropped dramatically. Today, childhood vaccination rates remain high.
Yes, poodles on the Iditarod
A musher named John Suter had a dream to run the Iditarod with Standard Poodles, and he actually made it happen. He got his first poodle in 1975 and by 1976 was running local races near Chugiak, Alaska.
Suter entered the 1988 Iditarod with standard European poodles on his dogsled team. He placed 38th out of 52 starters in that 1,100-mile race.
And yes — in 1988, Suter appeared on The Tonight Show to talk about his poodle racers. That link is available in YouTube.
It’s Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17, a time for celebration.
We drink green beer, eat corned beef and cabbage, and offer a shamrock for good luck.
Nothing’s too much for the man who chased snakes out of Ireland. Right? I agree, but let’s clear up a few things first.
The man we call Patrick was a slave who returned to be among his former captors.
This is the core of the man, and it’s an exceptional response. Here’s some more.
At the age of 16, Patrick was taken prisoner by Irish raiders and taken to Ireland. There, he spent around six years, enslaved as a shepherd — lonely and afraid, turning to religion for solace.
Most people, once they escape their “prison,” never look back. Patrick did the opposite. He felt there was work there to be done.
After six years of captivity, Patrick heard a voice telling him his ship was ready to take him home.
He traveled 200 miles to the nearest port and managed to persuade a captain to let him stow away. He made it back to Britain and his family.
A nice enough story if it ended there.
But it doesn’t.
After years of study, he returned to Ireland — his mission twofold: to minister to Christians already in Ireland, and to convert the non-believers.
He wasn’t responding to an obligation. He was responding to “a calling.”
And he wasn’t even Irish. He was born in either Scotland or northern England and described himself as a Roman and a Briton.
“Patrick” was not his birth name. When the Pope authorized him to evangelize Ireland, he was prophetically named Patricius, meaning “father of citizens.”
Because of his enslavement, Patrick missed out on formal education. His education was limited to religious teachings, and he apparently taught himself to read and write beyond basic Latin.
Most of us would applaud these results. But the lack of formal schooling embarrassed him — yet his success as a missionary is attributed to tenacity and “dogged determination,” even in the face of doubts about his own self-worth.
He actually wrote about this insecurity in his autobiography, Confessio — one of the oldest personal spiritual memoirs.
Here’s a surprising twist: Patrick was never canonized by the Catholic Church — simply because he lived before there was a formal canonization process.
He was proclaimed a saint by the people of Ireland His feast day wasn’t even added to the universal Church calendar until the 1600s.
Oh, and the snake stories are not real. Ireland has no snakes, then or now. The legend is regarded as a metaphor for Patrick’s Christianizing efforts, perhaps drawing on the Judeo-Christian tradition of snakes as symbols of evil.
In other words, he wasn’t driving out reptiles — he was driving out paganism.
Patrick’s story is about a traumatized teen-ager who became a willing exile for the sake of the very people who had enslaved him.
That’s not a story about green beer, corned beef and cabbage, or even the noble shamrock.
That’s a story about forgiveness, resilience, and radical purpose.
The sentence above proved to be an important lesson in my life, courtesy of a dear friend long since gone.
She’d catch me off guard in the middle of a rant (for want of a better word.) I might be speaking of a family member or friend—someone I knew pretty well. I was frustrated that they were not showing their “true” colors. Maybe I had them pegged as hard-hearted, and they just did a loving thing. Or maybe I thought they were tough, but then saw them well up with tears upon seeing a fragile sparrow deceased on the ground.
I could go on, but I hope I have made the point of my friend Martha Petrey. “MT (what she called me), nobody is just one thing. You miss out on lots of wonderful surprises by confining them to a single definition.”
I know that is true, but I also know that “categorizing” brings some control to an otherwise uncontrollable world. Hence, it makes me feel safe. It’s hard to give up those two assurances.
This week I encountered her wisdom once again.
My brother Jim texted me a long poem written by our paternal grandfather. I once had possession of it, and how it ended up in his home in Milwaukee is a mystery to us both.
Titled “Prodigal Girl,” the poem takes Luke 15:11-32 as its inspiration, only it flips the script. Ask yourself this, Ben Trainor seems to pose, would the story even appeal to Luke’s readers if the wayward offspring were a girl?
Jim and I never knew GrandpaTrainor since he died before we were born. All we had to go on were other people’s memories or opinions.
Most of them never knew Martha Petrey, or someone like her who understands that nobody is just one thing.
By most accounts that we ever heard, Ben was characterized as a stern, punitive, by-the-book man, and a staunch Roman Catholic who believed no one other than RCs would cross the threshold of heaven.
He was a railroad engineer, which means he was gone from home a lot, so we think Grandma probably filled in many blanks for her children and their children
Our mother, who somehow “got him” better than his own kids did, told us there was much more depth to the man than was ever revealed to his children.
She also shared that he loved to write, and was frequently published in Railroad Magazine.
Perhaps “Prodigal Girl” graced its pages.
Commentary by Mary Trainer about Prodigal Girl
Narrative reading of Prodigal Girl Poem
Prodigal Girl
By Benjamin Trainor (1923)
Historical Context
Written in 1923, ‘Prodigal Girl’ reflects a period in American society when moral expectations for women were rigid and public judgment could be swift and unforgiving. The 1920s were a time of social change—women had recently gained the right to vote, and cultural norms were shifting—yet traditional standards of virtue remained deeply entrenched. In this poem, Benjamin Trainor challenges the double standard that celebrated the return of the ‘prodigal son’ while condemning the ‘prodigal girl.’ His words offer a compassionate critique of societal hypocrisy and advocate for mercy, dignity, and fairness.
If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same …
At age nine (or thereabouts) I met Rudyard Kipling as I flipped through pages of “The Best Loved Poems of the American People.”
It was a book I frequented, guaranteed to be full of laughter and tears, poetry to meet you in whatever condition you arrive. It’s been on my mind lately, so this morning I ordered a used copy from Abe’s Books.
In Kipling’s poem “If” his words stretch across a lifetime of encounters and challenges of one human being, presumably a son.
My basic takeaway is, “If this can happen and that can happen, and you’re still standing, you have succeeded at life’s journey.”
The example atop this blog has stuck with me over seventy decades. In it he talks about two imposters—triumph and disaster. The advice is to treat them the same. Imposters? They can seem very real at the time. Gloriously real and painfully real.
Yet they both offer an opportunity to see ourselves for what we are. Bold, sweet, fleeting, flitting through our lives, and eventually out again.
They are incidents in a day, a month, a year. They are parts of the whole, but they are not the whole.
In us, if we are paying attention, these incidents can lead to wholeness. Paying attention is crucial.