James Derkits

Originally published in the South Jetty Newspaper September 2016 I love camp food. I don’t mean the food they serve at summer camp cafeterias, though that can also be tasty. I love the simple, delicious food eaten around a campfire. Macaroni and cheese tastes best after hiking up a long windy trail. One of our family favorite meals is a “hobo dinner:” It’s a heap of ground meat, cheese, ketchup, onions, and anything else you might want to throw in the cooler on the way out the door, all wrapped up in aluminum foil, and cooked right in the campfire coals.  It could be the fatigue, the environment, or the primitive feeling of conversation around a fire that makes the food taste so good. But probably simple campfire meals taste so good because they are sustenance in the wilderness. It is the food that is available out, away from any fast food options.  In those situations, oftentimes simple meals are the most meaningful.  Thomas Merton, one of my favorite spiritual writers, ...

Week after week, or perhaps in our daily prayers, we conclude our reading of the psalms by praying: Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning is now, and will be forever. Amen. Now, and forever. Amen. What we call the past is only a memory and what we call future is only imagined. We cannot be either place. What we actually have is only now. And forever. Now and forever are two sides of the same reality. Living in the kingdom of God means being present to this time and space where we are. For this now, here in this space, we pray to be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit. Another now be fully present to your family, your friends, or even your work. We cannot live past or future, but only the Present now. Being present now means we are present in forever. Stepping a toe into the eternity of life Jesus has given us. In the glory of the Trinity, we have now, and forever. These ashes are a reminder of that. Ash Wednesday, I wrote a poem in ...

Originally published in the South Jetty Newspaper Tuesdays March 11-April 8; 6:00 Our Dinner Series for Lent will focus on "Love Incarnate"    Love one another In God's glorious sense of humor, we will be learning about God's commandment against adultery on St. Valentine's Day weekend. I've been teaching a class on God's commandments this season using the introductory Ten Commandments known as the Decalogue as a guide and the adultery commandment happens to fall on that weekend. It has been a fascinating conversation as we look deeply into the meaning of each commandment and grow beyond our assumptions. There are little things like learning that the Sabbath Day is not Sunday, but Saturday. We also learned that taking the name of the Lord "for emptiness" or "in vain" is not all about cuss words, but about the responsibility of calling ourselves God's people, and behaving as such. In my case I call my self a Christian--calling myself ...

In his first letter to the church in Corinth, St. Paul offers a metaphor to teach about the new community of followers of the Way of Jesus. He wrote, in chapter twelve, " For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.  For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." It was a radical idea: that where you came from, and your social status was no longer considered relevant when it came to your relationship with God and your faith community. The early church even started calling each other brother and sister to emphasize the new understanding of their relationship with one another in God, whom they called, "Abba" (Aramaic for Daddy) as they were reborn from the water of their baptism.  As I come to know the people of my church and community over the years, it becomes clear that there are probably as ma...

" What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." So begins the St. John's Gospel. He reaches way back to the genesis of creation to make sure his readers understand: that which created is born into the creation in Jesus Christ. The Word of God, who spoke light into existence is now  shining with his own presence, as when he was transfigured before his closest disciples, and they saw him as blindingly bright as lightening in their presence.  My wife, Laura, and I lived in another town years ago when a hurricane rolled through and left us without power for a couple of weeks. It was dark at night. We had plenty of camping experience and we were young, so we set up a camp-kitchen in the back yard, and we managed just fine. We really noticed when the sunset in those days. The neighborhood was dark, and the house was very dark at night. Once we got a generator, we turne...

Originally Published in the South Jetty Newspaper  My parents named me after my dad, who was named after my grandad. My son, Eli carries part of that hand-me-down name, as well. My name is a simplified immigrant name that was longer and even held some geography of the old country.  Most of the time I’m called Dad or James, Fr. James or Padre. They all mean something a little different the context helps decide what I am called.  Jesus of Nazareth was and is called by many different names. Blind Bart knew he was the Son of David and Rabbi. Mary Magdeline called him Rabbouni outside the empty tomb, only after he spoke her name. This season when we celebrate Christmas, the winter festival of Christ’s light in the world, we might ponder that Jesus was called Emmanuel. It means God with us, and it is a deep revelation of the nature of God. God is not distant, but came to be with us, among us. God, born in a child to experience the limits of our humanity, and to redeem all human...