Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

May 2013

  • When my friend, David Henson wondered on Facebook where all the Pentecost posts were, it exposed me. Not that the world rotates around me. It’s just… I haven’t been here. My mind has been elsewhere. I wonder if they all are. All the minds, that is. All the minds are elsewhere when it comes time…

  • This is the picture I think of when I think of my wedding day. We took other pictures. Maybe better pictures. Certainly more “weddingy” pictures. But this one sticks for me. It is totally my favorite. It goes along with this fun, some-what private moment afterward, while the people were still in the nave, hearing…

  • a Sermon for Pentecost C Text: Acts 2:1-21 Listen to it here! A Holy Spectacle In Pentecost, we have the dawning of a new era. Jesus has departed and the Advocate, the Holy Spirit has arrived. It is now the apostles’ turn to deal with the ministry for which Jesus was preparing them. I’m not…

  • Today is the fifth anniversary of my ordination as a presbyter. Of course, I’m celebrating appropriately–writing sermons for a funeral on Saturday and for Pentecost on Sunday. Rather than reflect on all that I have been a part of over the last five years, I am instead struck by this picture. It dawned on me…

  • [This is the third of three posts about the sacraments. Click the links to read the first about the sacraments and the second about their messy history.] If you recall, a sacrament is the “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive…

  • [This is the second of three posts about the sacraments. Check out the first and the third.] As we explored yesterday, our Sacraments, primarily Holy Eucharist and Holy Baptism, are a physical and spiritual means of receiving grace. Today, we’ll have a small taste of the messiness around the living out of the Sacraments. There is…