James Derkits

Reflection for Morning Prayer July 28, 2024 Trinity by the Sea Some of you may not remember the first time you stepped onto a boat, or more to the point, the first time you fell out of a boat. Most of my falling-out stories are from the San Marcos River misjudging an eddy around a bend, the bow pulled suddenly in the opposite direction from what I expected, then pushed sideways up against a submerged root that gives loft to the bow sending two paddlers into the drink. Fortunately, all of those occasions eventually ended with laughter. Then there are those moments of non-commitment, like standing one foot on a log that had fallen across the river, foot in the canoe, and quickly realizing the mistake. A similar thing can happen on the docks here, at least with smaller boats. Stepping into a boat takes commitment. One foot on land and one in the vessel is a short-lived exercise in balance and stretching beyond the ability of most yogis. Be on land or in the boat, not in both places at o...

A friend was recently serving as chaplain at Mustang Island Conference Center and someone from his church asked to be baptized in the gulf while they were here. He called to ask for advice, and I talked about my experience with beach baptisms and gave a few pointers. It reminded me of when I first moved here and called Pastor William Campbell to ask him the same question before my first beach baptism. Now, I have lost count of how many beach baptisms we have celebrated now. Some still prefer to be sprinkled to being dunked (baptism literally means to be dunked), but either way, standing just off shore on the edge of the gulf which connects to the oceans is a profound place to be initiated into an intentional life in the Body of Christ.  There is an early church text simply called the Teaching , or in Greek, the Didache  which describes baptism in the first century church. The preference is for "living water" such as a stream or sea. If that is not available, it recommends col...

 A refleciotn written for Trinity by the Sea while I was on pilgrimage to Navajoland, Dine Bikeyah,  July 7, 2024, we did not gather because there was a Hurricane making landfall that morning. We missed the worst of it. ( Proper 9, Year B )   One’s hometown is possibly the hardest place to change. I heard about one of our local graduates who recently attended orientation. His parents talked about all the new people he had met, and I immediately thought about the friends I made when my parents moved me to San Marcos for college. Stephen had a Beastie Boys patch on his backpack. Colby invited us to his dorm room for Sunday night feast: a potluck of pitiful presentation of the contents of our door room fridges. Justin, Jim, and Billy the trickster trio from Cypress Texas. I still keep in touch with all of them. They all moved from their hometowns, too, and we grew and learned together. The experience changed us all forever. Mike Tocci, Fr. Mike Sells, Sr. Warden Marietta, an...