James Derkits

Let me start with a confession about my cynicism, to get that out of the way. Sometimes when I think about the labyrinth, especially after I haven't walked one for some time I think, "I've done this before, I know what it's like. I don't need to do this again." And then I walk it and it works. The first time I walked a labyrinth I was in college, and helping with a youth lock-in at St. David's, Austin . Now St. David's has a beautiful outdoor, stone labyrinth, but that time we taped it out in the parish hall. An ancient, sacred prayer path in painter's tape. The following summer, we taped one out on the gym floor at Camp Allen , then one on the stage of the parish hall of St. Mark's, San Marcos . I've also walked the canvas ones and one of my very favorites was a labyrinth at College of the Transfiguration, Grahamstown, South Africa . It was made from rocks lining the edges of a path our in the yard of the college. I had the idea to...

Eli's not quite ready to take his show on the road, but he has started making up his own jokes. He hears us tell a joke like, "What did the baseball mitt say to the baseball?" "I don't know, what?" "Catch ya' later!" We all laugh...we like those kinds of jokes. After a few minutes Eli will come up with one like this one: "What did the BB gun say to the BB?" "I don't know, what?" "I'm gonna shoot you out of there!" We all laugh. One of his favorites that I tell often is, "What did the hot-dog say when it crossed the finish line?" "I don't know, what?" "I'm the wiener! I'm the wiener!" That one is best told with an overabundance of enthusiasm, victory fists lifted high in the air. Eli's sense of humor is really budding. He laughs at things in movies, and a couple of times we've really gotten into a good, deep laugh that's hard to quit, lau...

Twitter almost caused me to wreck my truck recently. I wasn't tweeting while driving. I was shocked while listening to the radio when I heard, " Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and other schools traced these tweets [to their counties] and then they analyzed the language in the tweets to see if they were expressing anger, or love, or boredom. ... anger, hostility and aggression on Twitter is better able to predict patterns of heart disease than 10 other leading health indicators, including smoking, obesity and hypertension. " Yowza! The story went on to explain that it might not be the tweeters themselves, but people around them that originate the anger, stress, and thus the broken hearts.  Priests used to have a good deal of influence in their communities; they were a source, among a few, of information and perspective on life. That's not true today. If you were at Trinity (or some church) Sunday, and you're reading this, then you will have had ...

Originally Published in the South Jetty Newspaper Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless [God's] holy Name… for [God knows]whereof we are made; [remembering] that we but dust…. Bless the Lord, O my soul.   from Psalm 103 February 18 marked the beginning of the season of Lent this year, when Christians around the world smear a crude ashen cross on their foreheads to remember our mortality…a cross that paradoxically traces the oil-cross of our baptism into the eternal life of God. On the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday we read the powerful words from Psalm 103 remembering our mortality as well as our connection to the immortal. It doesn't take long living in a climate such as ours in Port Aransas to remember that the things of this life pass away. Even plastic rusts or rots here, to some degree, or at least plastic (like our deck chairs) breaks after a short time. Even apparently strong metals cannot withstand, for long, the blast of the salt br...

In another of my blogs, you might read about the church not being the building, but the people, and that perpetuating an institution is not the purpose of our spiritual journey. With that acknowledged, I want to reflect today about these beautiful new doors on our church:  Last Sunday, we had our annual meeting, and I used a metaphor of the ebb and flow of the tides as a way to think about our discipleship and apostleship as Christians. We gather as a church body to be formed and transformed, supported and sustained, to be nurtured and fed. Then we are sent out into the world, empowered by the Spirit, to do those things for others, to carry the Gospel in our hearts into the world, and to help bring about that transformation we ourselves have experienced in the midst of our everyday lives.  Certainly we could do that gathering-part in a park, on a beach, or under a public pavilion; One of my own communities-of-support gathers on phone calls, not even physically in one sp...

Originally Published in the South Jetty Newpaper A good friend loaned me a book called Anarchy Evolution . She thought I might like it since I used to be in a punk band and it is written by the front man from the band Bad Religion. The author also happens to be an evolutionary biologist. I have indeed enjoyed the book in which he explores the evolution of punk rock music weaving together science, music, and his own world view. You may (or may not) be surprised to be learning about this book here since the author is an atheist. That's one theme of his book. The funny thing, to me, about reading about his atheism, and why he doesn't believe in god, is that the god he describes, the one that he doesn't believe in, I don't believe in either. It's been a while since I took a debate class, but in many cases it seems he has set up a straw-man argument, and rightfully has knocked it down. Now, his book is more complex than just focusing on his beliefs, but it reminds me ...

First of all, let me introduce a few new friends (in the above picture): Shelly, Adrian, and Taryn. I only met them on the first day of the Inner Journey Retreat retreat, and by the time I left a few days later, I thought of them as "my new camp friends." If you know me, or have read a handful of these blogs, you might pick up on how special that label is to me. I think the reason that it came to me to think of them as my new camp friends isn't just because we played music by a fire or went on a moonlit hike; it's because the welcome, care, and honesty I experienced were similar to what I experienced going to camp growing up. It was also, and perhaps most importantly about the spiritual depth we engaged in, exploring what makes us tick as humans, and how to engage more intentionally and purposefully in this journey of life.  My mentor Pittman McGehee encouraged me to go in an email. I had written him about a book I was reading and part of  a recent dream. I lea...