July 26, 2026 Trinity 8 It was a beautiful, sunny, summer day in Baltimore, Md. People in a neighborhood of neatly kept brick rowhouses were going about their usual business. A few minutes before 10 a.m. — BOOM! — a massive explosion rocked the entire neighborhood. A great plume of white smoke shot into the sky, and a hail of debris — bricks, scraps of wood, roof shingles — came raining down on the manicured front lawns. Articles of clothing were left hanging from tree limbs.

July 12, 2026 Trinity 6 Everybody knows about the Nobel Prizes, given each year in categories including physics, chemistry, medicine and economic sciences. But how about the “IG Nobels”? This set of awards is given for scientific research that “makes people laugh, then think.” As the word “ignoble” suggests, these awards are not particularly honorable. They carry much less social status than the lofty Nobel Prizes. (The Nobel Peace Prize that was coveted so much by “You-know-

July 5, 2026 The Fifth Sunday after Trinity St. Juniperro Serra On a sunny Saturday last year at Wimbledon, Centre Court had the pleasant buzz of a summer outing — the kind where spectators sip Pimm’s, nibble strawberries drowned in champagne, and pretend they are simply out for a gentle afternoon rather than watching world-class athletes battle nerves and destiny. Amanda Anisimova — young, immensely talented and having just played the match of her life, beating top-ranked Ar

June 28, 2026 Trinity IV You are staring at a frozen computer screen. Nothing happens, no matter how many times you click the mouse or how hard you bang on the keyboard. But, before you pick up the machine and take it to the trash in the fit of a temper tantrum, you move on to the last-ditch solution: reboot. Rebooting is what you do when something goes deeply wrong — with either your machine or one of its key programs. You probably had to learn how to reboot a computer at s

June 21, 2026 Trinity III One evening a while back in San Bernardino County, California, a car chase began about 6:30 p.m., coming to a conclusion about 90 minutes later. The suspect in a car theft took off from Chino and led police on a chase that ended in Hawthorne. The erratic and meandering journey took officers to the Ventura Freeway, where the suspect vehicle sideswiped a Prius and nearly hit a tanker truck. After driving in the wrong direction, the thief pulled the car

June 14, 2026 Trinity II It is not surprising that pastors and ministers are generally compassionate people. Makes sense. But is it possible that pastors might sometimes be the object of compassion rather than a channel of compassion? A certain pastor describes his own experience. “There I was, standing in a room full of treadmills, stationary bikes with huge fans and people with wires attached to their chests monitored by a group of nurses. I had a fresh scar running down my

June 7, 2026 Corpus Christi Sunday If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. According to journalist Megan McArdle, a lot of people are doing just that. Ahe says that the average woman in the 1920s spent about 30 hours a week preparing food and cleaning up. By the 1950s, she was doing this just 20 hours a week. Now, women average about five hours a week in the kitchen. And that's not because men are stepping in to help -- guys give only about 15 minutes a day to ki

May 31, 2026 Trinity Sunday He-Man, Skeletor, Teela, Man-at-Arms, Stratos, Zodac, Beast Man and Mer-Man. If you know these names, you grew up watching cartoons in the 1980s. They started as toys, small action figures with bulging muscles that could be used in imaginary battles. Then they were featured in a popular Saturday morning cartoon series, comic books, video games, magazines and several feature films. Novelist Brian Cave writes that they had “everything a kid could ask

May 24, 2026 Whitsunday (Pentecost) You have probably heard about the “Nones.” It’s a term used by organizations such as the Pew Research Center for people who describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” when surveyed about their present religion, if any. Religion? None. Further questions on these surveys often reveal that many Nones are not necessarily hostile against organized religion. Some even describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious,”

May 17, 2026 Ascension Sunday Most of us spend more time sitting in chairs than thinking about chairs, but maybe we should devote even more time to hunting for the perfect chair. There's a whole book about that pursuit. It's titled Now I Sit Me Down and it's written by architect Witold Rybczynski (Rib-shin-skee).He refers to some chairs as follows:+ used in ancient Greece called klismos, which had a curved backrest and tapering, out-curved legs;+ the yokeback chair of the Son

May 10, 2026 Sixth Sunday of Easter In the beginning, he was a freelance window cleaner, paid by the pane. Then a client asked him to clean a vacant property, one that was an absolute mess. From there, he started a company that will tidy up anything, no matter how repulsive. His name is Ben Giles. Along with the members of his team, he can clean everything from crime scenes to industrial accidents. According to The Guardian, he has become an expert in removing evidence of spi

May 3, 2026 Fifth Sunday of Easter “Satisfaction Guaranteed.” You see it stamped on boxes, printed on receipts, and splashed across storefront windows and websites. It is the promise we crave before we buy. The phrase was part of the consumer lingo-sphere long before Mick Jagger began complaining that he “can’t get no satisfaction.” Today, the concept of guaranteed satisfaction has wandered far beyond Jagger’s personal problems and the shopping malls of America. It is across

April 26, 2026 Fourth Sunday of Easter (Easter III) Many voices call out to us in our noisy world. Some are telling us to be afraid - very afraid. Others invite us to follow their programs, buy their products or support their candidates. Other voices give us strength and peace, even in the middle of dangerous situations. Whose voice are you hearing? Joan Mulholland was a Freedom Rider in the early 1960s. She was part of a group of Blacks and whites who rode on interstate bus

April 12, 2026 Low Sunday/Divine Mercy Sunday Who really shot JFK? Were the moon landings real or staged? Did Elvis really die in 1977, or did he fake his death in order to get some privacy? Was Paul McCartney actually replaced by a look-alike when he allegedly died in 1966? Was 9/11 staged by the U.S. government? Did Trump win the 2020 elections? Are all these questions crazy? Maybe it depends on the thickness of your tinfoil hat. Americans love a good conspiracy theory, and

April 5, 2026 Easter Sunday Imagine the shock of visiting a loved one’s grave, only to find incontrovertible evidence that the grave has been tampered with and the body is nowhere to be found. This is essentially Mary’s situation in the opening verses of the Gospel text, and it was also the experience of Sherene Johnson. Ten members of the Johnson family are buried in Brighton Cemetery in Alabama. It is a town that gets a lot of rain, and it is not unusual for the cemetery to

March 29, 2026 Palm Sunday The main body of today’s psalm text begins with, “Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.” The mind immediately goes to the massive, ornate and intimidating gates that have been erected by cities and nations throughout world history. Think of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Once a symbol of division during the Cold War, it’s now a symbol of unity. Or the Ishtar Gate in ancient Babylon, resple

March 22, 2026 Fifth Sunday of Lent Passion Sunday There’s an old story about Sister Mary Margaret, who worked as a visiting nurse. It was back in the day when nuns still wore habits. One day, the good Sister was driving around visiting homebound patients when she ran out of gas, just across the street from a gas station. She walked over and asked the attendant if he had a gas can she could borrow. “Sorry, Sister,” he said. “Some guy was here yesterday with the same problem.

March 15, 2026 Refreshment Sunday (St. Archbishop Wedgwood) If you see a word that begins with “presby,” chances are it has something to so with the Presbyterian tradition, or possibly “presbytery” in Catholic churches in Great Britain, which is the name of the room where priests put on their vestments. These words come from the Greek word “presbyter,” which simply means “elder.” Presbyterian churches are governed by presbyters, elders elected by the congregation. Catholic p

The best-selling vehicle in the United States for the past 45 years is not a sedan. Not a van. Not an SUV. It’s a pickup truck: The Ford F-150. With over 2.1 million full size pick ups sold in the USA in an average year, over 820,000 of them is the F-150. About 33,000 of these were the electric variation. According to Motor and Wheels website, the F-150 is popular because it has an all-aluminum body, and available 10-speed automatic transmission and turbocharged engine. The t

February 15, 2026 Quinquagesima Recently, I watched a YouTube video of an episode of a short running series called, “The Story of God.” The series follows Morgan Freeman in search of God. It was an interesting series on television a few years ago, and it popped up on my YouTube feed as a suggestion and I decided to watch them again. In one episode, Morgan spoke with Jesse Bering a research psychologist and Head of the Department of Science Communication at Queen's University