James Derkits

I still feel grateful to have started my ordained ministry serving with The Rev. Beth Fain as my rector at St. Mary's, Cypress. Beth was at St. Mary's for over 20 years, and she was there for so long, in part, because she follows that commandment about honoring the sabbath and keeping it holy. Not to the letter, but the spirit that "most often broken" of the commandments as she would say. (She now works on the Diocese of Texas staff, and still teaches about sabbath.) We do not live in a culture that honors sabbath. As I've learned, it's about taking time to rest, reflect, and do those things that are restorative; it is spending time with God, in ways that support your own physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual health. For me, that is often running, surfing, writing, and playing music. After Eli gets out of school, it's playing with him. When Laura and I get to take a day together, even better. My sabbath-day happens to be on Friday, and there ...

Remember that you are dust...or sand, and salt, and water, and all sorts of decomposed matter. I got into a conversation with a couple of friends recently about what we are saying to our congregations as we smudge a cross of ash on people's heads and repeat the phrase, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." In one sense it remembers the second creation story in the book of Genesis when God forms the human from the dirt. It also recalls that our bodies are composed of recycled material that died, fell to the earth, fed plants, was processed by our mothers through food, and eventually, that old decomposed material began to form us, and then we started taking in the food (from the dust) and processing it ourselves. It recalls the miraculous quality of our very existence! It helps me to recollect that I've come from the prima materia of the earth, and yes, I will someday return to it again to eventually fertilize another garden for another generatio...

Thank you for taking time to read this, I hope it is worth your time.  We only have 24 hours a day, and if we are living a healthy life, about eight of those hours are spent sleeping. How do you spend the other 16? I have, in the past, led people thought a process of examining (not just a day, but) a week of hours, to determine how they spend their time. It is a way to examine what you actually place value in; similar to examining your finances to create a budget it can help you be intentional about the way your precious time is spent. It's interesting to compare things like how much time is spent watching TV verses how much time is spent in prayer. That may lead to pondering what might be influencing your decisions. The question about time comes up for me, because in my work I am reminded that our time is not infinite; not in this way: the familiar, earthly pilgrimage. It's part of a broader awareness that everything we have is a gift from God. This breath I am breathing i...

I get into the sentimental side of Christmas; that snow covered, Hallmark Movie Channel, Rudolf, and wanting for Two Front Teeth; all of that goes on display in the world earlier and earlier each year. It's fun to put on those tacky sweaters and eat too much turkey. I get into that side of Christmas like most people (though I don't go shopping the day after Thanksgiving.) There is another side to Christmas that is tangent to that worldly, fun, memory-lane sentimental side of Christmas, and it's the Jesus part. Sometimes you can find a little baby tucked away behind the big-ol-Santa statue, but even that little baby can get lost in the fluff of nostalgia. We hear very little of Jesus birth and childhood, and most of that is about what was happening around him--how the world responded to his Incarnation (when God put on flesh.) Jesus started causing trouble the moment he was born. The local authorities were out to get him because he threatened the order of things. There...