Mother Claire's Sermons

An Egyptian in Amente, the realm of the dead, was allowed to return to earth in order to deal with an Ethiopian magician who was proving too powerful for the magicians of Egypt. He was reincarnated as the miraculous child of a childless couple, Setme and his wife, and called Si-Osiris. When he reached the age of twelve he vanquished the Ethiopian magician and returned to Amente. But before this there was an occasion when father and son observed two funerals, one of a rich man buried in sumptuous clothing and with much mourning, the other of a poor man buried without ceremony or mourning. The father declared he would rather have the lot of the rich man than the pauper, but his son expressed the wish that his father’s fate in Amente would be that of the pauper rather than that of the rich man. In order to justify his wish and demonstrate the reversal of fortunes in the afterlife, he took his father on a tour of the seven halls of Amente. The account of the first three halls is lost. In t...

One of the biggest decisions a parent has to make before the birth of their child is on a name. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to choose the perfect name to set our children up for success. After all, would a rose by any other name smell so sweet? That question is explored in the 2005 book Freakonomics , which discusses naming of children and questions such as the correlation between the number of books in the home and educational accomplishment of children. It turns out, neither the child’s name or quantity of books have the power in and of themselves to create little well-adjusted geniuses. The important thing is what these things say about the parents - if you have a ton of books in the house, you are likely well-educated, have the money and resources to spend on books, and to allow you to spend time reading those books to your children. Same with children’s names - it is what the name tells us about the parents moreso than what it predicts about any child. A friend from high...

There’s an old hymn that begins “there were ninety and nine that safely lay / In the shelter of the fold / But one was out on the hills away / Far off from the gates of gold / Away on the mountains wild and bare / Away from the tender Shepherd’s care.” It’s a lovely sentiment. Unfortunately, it is inaccurate. The song ignores an important word and therefore tames the text so much that it takes most of the risk out of what the shepherd does. Luke and Matthew both contain this story about a shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine behind to find the single lost sheep. But they aren’t left behind in gates of gold, or safely in the shelter of the fold. Matthew has the sheep “on the mountain”. Luke is even more stark in where the ninety-nine are: “in the wilderness”. So, unlike the song suggests, it isn’t just the one sheep who is on the “on the mountains wild and bare”, it’s the ninety-nine as well. Today we read the first two in a series of three parables about finding something that was lost....

As parents, one of the life skills my husband and I are teaching our kids is how to proportionally react to things. That it’s ok to feel disappointed, but maybe sitting down and screaming isn’t the best way to express those feelings. It’s ok to be angry, but hitting is not an acceptable way to express that anger. It’s ok to be sad that we’re leaving the park, but running away and hiding is not an option. Even as we learn to self-regulate as we grow up, we don’t always react to things appropriately. We overreact or underreact all the time, just usually not by sitting down and screaming. But we do the adult equivalent. We push away people we love. We inappropriately use substances. We pretend problems don’t exist - the adult equivalent of when my kids pretend not to hear me when I have something to say that they don’t want to hear. Today, in eight short verses, Luke gives us two opportunities to overreact and one to underreact. We start out strong with an overreaction. Jesus says, “whoev...