Supply at Holy Comforter

I was supply priest at Holy Comforter. yesterday morning while the Chaplain, Fred Devall is on vacation. I will be there again next Sunday. Holy Comforter is the Episcopalian worship center at the University of New Orleans (Lakeside campus) and Southern University at New Orleans. The center is part of the Evangelical vision of Charles Jenkins, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana. I enjoyed being behind the altar again for the first time since my retirement at Easter. Like an old fire horse who hears the bell on Sunday morning, it was good to be back in harness. Since it was Trinity Sunday, I pointed out that the Trinity is one of the things that distinguishes Christianity from other monotheistic religions. My sermon centered on explaining the Holy Trinity in terms of human existence: the physical, human image we see in a mirror (the son), the reality of the potential self, created in the image of God (God the Father, which lives behind the human image) toward which we journey in a lifetime of discovery and revelation, and our human soul, which is immortal and unperishable like the Holy Spirit. I distinguished the human "spirit," which animates our material bodies but which is lost at the end of mortal life, from our human soul which continues to exist after physical death. In God, of course, there is no similar distinction between spirit and soul because the Godhead is immortal, immutable and omnipotent. Eventually I will expand the sermon in the Sermons link on my web site www.glynnharper.com.

Letter to the Editor of The New Republic

I emailed the following note to The New Republic Magazine

Re: Andrew Sullivan’s The Euro Menace, June 16, 2003>.

I for one take some comfort in the prospect of a United States of Europe, which might serve as a counterbalance to the bullying behavior of the U.S.A. as characterized by the current administration. As a loyal, patriotic American, I am frankly embarrassed and shamed by our country's "do as I say and not as I do" behavior. For instance (as Peter Beinart points out in TRB from Washington in the June 9, 2003 issue) the decision to end the ban on developing low-yield tactical nuclear weapons while opposing the development of nuclear weapons by others. If an unchecked U.S.A. troubles me, as a citizen, I can only imagine the fear it must engender in the rest of the world where our credibility and trust continue to erode in the face of the arrogance of the Bush Administration.