Every Christmas during my childhood, my older brother Robert and I eagerly awaited the night CBS would air the Claymation cartoon special, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” We loved everything about it: Santa Claus, who took care to fatten himself up before Christmas so his red suit would fit; Rudolph, with his nose so bright; Yukon Cornelius and Hermie the Elf, who tame the Abominable Snowman. But the part of the cartoon I most anticipated, for reasons I could not explain in childhood, was the Island of Misfit Toys.
Month: October 2017
The Way Down is the Way Up: Dante’s Divine Comedy, Session 3
Giving Everything to God
At the parish I served in Roanoke, Virginia—St. John’s—we had a partnership with the Virginia Tech Medical School, which is also located in Roanoke. At the end of each spring semester, med school faculty and first-year medical students gathered in St. John’s memorial garden, and together we interred in sacred ground the cremated remains of those who had donated their bodies to medical education. It was a lovely service, planned by the medical school students with minimal guidance from me. Doctors-in-training treated the ashes of the cadavers with reverence. Students and faculty of varied faiths prayed, side-by-side.
God in the Midst of the City 