James Derkits

One of the repeated phrases in the movie The Big Lebowski is "The Dude Abides." It's one of my favorite movies, and during seminary, we would watch it before going out for late-night bowling. The abide word stood out to me because around the same time I was really into that movie, I was also struggling to learn a little bit of Biblical Greek. The abide word is all over St. John's Gospel. That word, abide, is just one English translation of the Greek word  μένω or menoe. It may also be translated stay, remain, dwell, live, or be.  After discovering it, μένω became part of my prayer life, especially in my meditation practice. It points me toward letting go of action, worry, thinking; away from all that I do to keep myself busy, and just be with Christ. Christians sometimes think we know better than God and spend a lot of time telling God about the way things should be. I'm not saying we shouldn't share what's heavy on our hearts with God. I'm all for tha...

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...