Praying for our Nation on the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — July 4, 2026
Dear People of God in the Granite State:
On this milestone Independence Day, perhaps you have noticed a certain ambivalence about its celebration in others and in yourself. We do indeed have so much to give thanks for—our land’s natural and bounteous beauty, the richness of the many heritages that have contributed to our varied customs and people, and the blessings of community, freedom of faith and speech, the capacity to pursue genuine happiness. At the same time, we acknowledge the fear and suspicions that plague us, the widening inequities of wealth, health care, education, and opportunities that do more to constrain, rather than enhance, the freedoms the Declaration still promises. Our Founders were both heroic and flawed men. They sought the best for a people, and even nations, yet unborn. And they were tragic in their inability to cast the shackles of slavery for all humankind, to allow the right to vote to all, or to settle this nation without the violent eradication and subjection of the native peoples, the first stewards of these lands and waters.
To acknowledge these both/ands is to acknowledge the complex truth on which God always insists. For Christians, in whom all memory is present in the Presence of a righteous God, history is studied and told not for the sake of a paralyzing shame, but to set us toward new horizons of justice, mercy, and grace.
Whether you are conservative or progressive, Republican or Democrat, (or like me, who bristle at being labeled by any party and refuse to be locked into the orthodoxies of any political party), you may resonate with the words of an early student of our nation, Alexis de Tocqueville. Tocqueville spoke of our nation’s promise in this way: “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” (Democracy in America, Chapter XIII, 1835.)
I invite us to give thanks, hearty thanks, for this nation. And I invite us to appeal to God’s grace and mercy to grant us the courage, vision, and trust in the God, the Judge of all nations, who is to assist us in repairing our faults. To make this prayer, I turn to the Book of Common Prayer, and the Thanksgiving for National Life, page 838, included below.
Faithfully Yours in the Sovereign Lord Jesus Christ,
+Rob
Thanksgiving for National Life
Almighty God, giver of all good things:
We thank you for the natural majesty and beauty of this land.
They restore us, though we often destroy them.
Heal us.
We thank you for the great resources of this nation. They
make us rich, though we often exploit them.
Forgive us.
We thank you for the men and women who have made this
country strong. They are models for us, though we often fall
short of them.
Inspire us.
We thank you for the torch of liberty which has been lit in
this land. It has drawn people from every nation, though we
have often hidden from its light.
Enlighten us.
We thank you for the faith we have inherited in all its rich
variety. It sustains our life, though we have been faithless
again and again.
Renew us.
Help us, O Lord, to finish the good work here begun.
Strengthen our efforts to blot out ignorance and prejudice,
and to abolish poverty and crime. And hasten the day when
all our people, with many voices in one united chorus, will
glorify your holy Name. Amen.
For Heroic Service
O Judge of the nations, we remember before you with grateful
hearts the men and women of our country who in the day of
decision ventured much for the liberties we now enjoy. Grant
that we may not rest until all the people of this land share the
benefits of true freedom and gladly accept its disciplines. This
we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
*
Bishop Rob Delivers Final Address at St. Paul's School - April 13, 2026
Good morning. It is a deep and awesome privilege to be with you again. Thank you for your welcome. This passage that we just heard from John's gospel is the first of what are referred to as the resurrection appearances of Jesus. He comes and he meets the disciples the evening after he rises from the dead and he comes with wounds. He comes showing them the evidence of their having abandoned him at the cross. They're locked in a room. They've locked themselves into a room for fear and probably shame. Each of them in that room left Jesus to hang and die.
It's of note that when Jesus comes, he could have just said, "Where were you? You promised to be with me even to the end of time, to the end of this whole journey, and you all took off—each one of you.” Instead, the word Jesus speaks is, “Peace.” Peace. It's a message of forgiveness, a message of healing, a message of restoration, of community in the midst of division, hatred, and fear. Yesterday, most Christian churches that follow what's called the Revised Common Lectionary read that passage of Jesus extending peace, but the same day, we also heard in the news that prospects of peace in the Middle East were becoming more remote.
And it occurred to me, as it often does, that there will be no world peace if there's not first peace among us, peace within our own communities, our own neighborhoods, among us in our own schools and churches and synagogues and mosques, peace within ourselves. And peace is not something that urges us to just forget what we've done with each other, against each other or to each other. Real peace does erase our memory of past hurt, but it holds us accountable without rancor, without hatred, always respecting the dignity of every human being. I can never read this passage of being in a locked room--the disciples in a locked room for fear and shame, and Jesus entering that room --without remembering of a moment in my life when I was very young, 13 years old, that bears some similarity, although in a much less significant way. But for me, it was a pivotal moment.
I grew up in suburban Connecticut, outside of New Haven, and I was a freshman in high school at the time. And I remember one day, it was late fall, and the bus took us home, and I got off the bus and we started to walk. It was about a quarter mile walk from the bus stop to my house, and there were a number of other students. One was Mary, my next door neighbor, with whom we shared homework with our algebra or geometry, whatever that was, which I was never good at. And there were three brothers, Billy, Gary, and David. And we got off the bus and started walking home, and one of the brothers noticed a crab apple tree on another house in that development. Something came over him, and he decided that he would pick up one of the crab apples that had fallen to the ground. There was a whole nest of them. And he picked it up, and he threw it at Mary, hitting her in the back.
He did it again, this time hitting her in her cheek. She began to cry and quickened her pace, and then the other brothers followed, gathering fistfuls of crab apples and hurling them at Mary. And then they asked, "Robbie, how about you? " And so I picked up a crab apple and also hit Mary. It landed in the back of her head, hard enough to sting. We all made it home. After that, I went into my house. Both my parents worked, so I opened my math book and started to try to do my homework. About a half an hour went by and the doorbell rang, and I wondered who could that be. So, I went down the hallway and I could see through the panel of windows on each side of the door that it, of course, was Mary.
I pretended not to hear. I hid away, but she kept ringing the doorbell. Finally, I couldn't pretend anymore, and I had to open the door. And there she was, her face tear-stained, and she said, "Rob, the Miller boys, they always treat me that way. I could expect it from them, something like that. But today, today it was you. I thought we were friends.”
God help me, I just melted at that moment. I don't think I could even say, "I'm sorry." But she knew that even at 13 years old, even though we didn't know the language of forgiveness and grace and all of that, we knew that there was a deep hurt.
We were not at peace. Now, God bless my mother. She always had a cookie jar of those wonderful Toll House cookies. I said, "Mary, come in, please." And I put out some of those cookies out and poured some milk. Maybe that was the beginning of my decision to become a priest. It was like teenage communion, and we just sat there in silence and had cookies. Somehow we got through the next hour or so. We talked about math. We made small talk. Small talk is not to be underestimated in our healing with one another, small talk, lowers temperatures. Small talk begins the tender bonds that build and restores relationships.
The next morning, we went to the bus stop and I knew that I had to stand with Mary and walk alongside her as she faced the cruelty, the senseless, gratuitous, pathetic cruelty of my other neighbors. Sure enough, they picked up crab apples even the next morning and started hurling them this time at both of us. That afternoon when we came back from the bus, I think they realized that it was puny and pathetic what they were doing. They had stopped.
You remember that scene in the Lion King? (This is a transition.) When Simba is called back to the pride, (interestingly called, “the pride”), to come back to community after living a life of Hakuna Matada—where you just look after your own desires and wants and concerns. Rafiki, who holds a staff and has vestments, is a priest but he’s also, of course, a baboon. (Clergy are sometimes thought of that way.) Anyway, Rafiki leads Simba to a pool of water and he, Simba look at the pool of water. The movie superimposes this image of his father, Mufasa. And somewhere Mufasa says, "Simba, you have become less than you are.”
You have become less than you are.
When Mary rang that doorbell and she said, "Rob, today it was you” That was my Mufasa moment. “You have become less than you are.” Jesus doesn't bother to ring the doorbell. He goes through locked doors and when he shares peace to those disciples undeserving and needing to be held into account, he reminds them that you have the power to forgive or to retain the memory of hurt. That's the message of our faith. That's the message of Easter. If we can't reckon with the call to become who God has created us to be, holy, flawed, deeply flawed, wholly beautiful and forgiven, there's no chance for this world. It starts here. It starts in our own hearts.
Thank you.
Easter Message from Bishop Rob — April 2026
Every year, a close reading of the same gospel, even if we’ve read it over a life-time, brings something fresh, something green, and new—something surprising. It may be very familiar and obvious, but the Holy Spirit wants us to notice it as though for the first time because we need to hear it for the first time. This year what springs up as though a new sunrise is the verse in John’s gospel, at the end of the Good Friday reading, when we hear these words:
Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden, there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid.
To this day, in the Holy City of Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is also known as the site of Calvary, Golgotha, the place of the crucifixion, where tradition tells us that a relic of the cross was uncovered AND it is also the place where Jesus was laid in an unused tomb. It’s from the tomb, of course, where God raised him from the dead. Execution and resurrection happen in the same small piece of real estate: the place of unimaginable suffering by human hands and hearts AND the site of the world changing triumph of life over death, love over fear, forgiveness over hatred. It is the place our savior expresses humankind’s deepest abandonment by God and humankind. And it is the site of recognition: of us recognizing Jesus and then the risen Jesus seeing us as a friend. It is the site of the most holy “both/and” which is our life in the Risen Christ.
Our Calvaries are legions. There are so many, too many, and too heartbreaking to list. We all know what they are. The effects of human sin and cruelty, done by us and to us, are all around. We see them. They burden and grieve us. Those crucifixions lead us to times of both despair and hope. They are the reason for our prayers, our seeking help from God and each other. They are the cause of our thirst for righteousness, our struggles to forgive, and our cries to be forgiven. The desolate Place of the Skull and the Garden of Resurrection are layered on top of each other. The suffering and death of bodies, of communities, of hope itself, occur in the same place, and with even more power where we meet Jesus’ Rising. From out of the depth of the Sepulchre, Jesus calls us each by name just as he called to Mary Magdalene on that first Easter morning.
May your Good Fridays, your scenes of deep loss and sorrow be converted into a glorious resurrection, a rising to life, to a love and a life that is stronger than death. What courageous joy that gives us, to know in our bones that nothing, not even death, or the fear of death, will separate us from the love of God in Jesus. May that love and life rise in our hearts this Easter, and may every day be Easter. Jesus Christ is Risen. Alleluia.
Bishop Rob and Bishop Angel, of Cuba, spend time together.
Report from Bishop Rob - House of Bishops Spring Meeting - March 17-25, 2026
It was a privilege for me to attend the spring gathering of the House of Bishops at Camp Allen in the Diocese of Texas. Though I always hate to leave my beloved Diocese of New Hampshire, I find the time enriching to be with my colleague bishops from the whole Episcopal Church, including from the dioceses in Latin America, Europe, and Taiwan.
By now a Word to the Church has been issued. Its intent is to offer a message of hope, unfailing in the Good News of Jesus Christ, even in times of crisis and discouragement. The new war in Iran—extending to the whole Middle East—the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, and other parts of the world weigh heavily on all of our hearts. Such suffering is a call for us all to pray, fervently, for efforts for a just and lasting peace. I am humbled by the work of my fellow bishops and their churches as they strain to hold together community in Christian fellowship even as forces of inhumanity toward immigrants are rampant and political rages foam.
We always come together in prayer. I have been part of a small but growing number of bishops who devote daily time on contemplation. We do this because as our world experiences such chaos, disorientation, and division, and even war, it is essential that Christians, especially Christian leaders, stay rooted in the awareness of God’s enduring, loving, and life-giving presence in the Incarnate, Crucified and Risen Jesus. Any word or action that is not rooted in prayer is, as Paul says, like a noisy gong to a clanging cymbal. I believe that the tenor of our discussions during the more business-oriented sessions of the House has been more open to deep listening and respect because of the critical mass of bishops who practice contemplative prayer, even those who consider themselves more activist on certain issues.
We spent much of our time discussing the state of theological education, particularly for the raising up of priests in our Church. The landscape of traditional seminary training has shifted significantly in the past 15-20 years. Our denomination has gone from relying on eleven 3-year residential and very expensive seminaries to something like seven, and each of those offering paths that are more accessible to postulants for Holy Orders in local settings, such as rural New England. Much of the changes in education have been driven by economic and demographic forces. The bishops’ discussion of these trends was much overdue. It was so confirming to me to see how our establishment of the School for Ministry, for laity, deacons and priests is something that is becoming more and more accepted and even normative in the wider church. As I spoke with bishops from Ecuador, Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Massachusetts and Pittsburgh, I was heartened to learn how we are all facing similar challenges in the urgent need to raise up new ministers of the gospel. New Hampshire’s hybrid model is something looked to and admired by such different settings in the Episcopal Church.
We also heard of Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe’s diligent efforts to reform and reshape the organizational structure of the Episcopal Church in a way that supports evangelism, church planting, and redevelopment. There are significant and overdue changes being contemplated, about which we will hear in the coming months. This support for church renewal is of keen interest to us in New Hampshire as we initiate new missions in Manchester, Claremont, Portsmouth, and more in the coming years. This is so important to consider and welcome as demographic models predict a movement northward of the U.S. population in the coming decades. We have been praying for young adults and families for years. I pray that the spiritual and organization work we have done in our Diocese in recent years has helped us prepare for the growth that, God willing, is coming our way.
We discussed proposals in the wider Anglican communion that seek to deepen and further relationships with other provinces of the Church where relationships have been strained and in disrepair for a variety of reasons. The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals are fascinating to read because they imagine a church that is seeking ways to be in communion, and defining what communion means, in an era when the long-term trend for churches, religions, indeed almost every institution in society is toward greater splintering. Though the bishops are, in my view, rightly cautious about the proposals, it is encouraging to think of the many who continue to do the hard and sacred work of true reconciliation across serious differences of practice.
I was so grateful to hear a fulsome presentation from Bishop Ann Ritonia, Bishop Suffragan for the Armed Forces and Federal Ministries. Our church’s work to provide pastoral care and accompaniment to chaplains in the military, federal prisons and hospitals is truly essential, especially when so many of these chaplains encounter tremendous moral, spiritual, and physical trauma. I am grateful for Bishop Ann’s witness to both the gospel of Jesus Christ AND the U.S Constitution’s protection against the incursion of governmental establishment of religion of any kind.
Finally, the return home through a Houston airport stressed with dramatically fewer TSA agents and many more ICE agents felt like being in a country that has changed. As I walked through the labyrinth paths to the security check points, along with thousands of others, I thought of the many pilgrims throughout millennia who have walked the Way of the Cross in Jerusalem, recalling the path the Jesus took from his entry into that City, to his actions in the Temple, to his Trial, his Crucifixion, his burial and his Rising.
I hope that wherever your journey and observances this coming Holy Week takes you, you may know how Jesus Christ walks alongside you, sharing your hopes, your joys, and the depths of your sorrows.
He will raise us all in peace and glory.
Yours in the Risen Christ,
+Rob
Veterans' Day Statement - November 11, 2020
Recently, Polly and I joined the many in our country who have immediate family members in the military. Our oldest son is now a Captain in the U.S. Army, serving as a doctor at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.. … HERE
Bishop Rob's Covid-19 Statement: November 11 2020
Dear friends,
Grace and Peace be with you in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
I want to speak about the re-emergence of the COVID 19 virus in our state. There are new facts and trends of the coronavirus that now confront us. And there is troubling news in the short-term, even if we have been given real hope of an effective vaccine on its way in the coming months.
Dear friends,
Grace and Peace be with you in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
I want to speak about the re-emergence of the COVID 19 virus in our state. There are new facts and trends of the coronavirus that now confront us. And there is troubling news in the short-term, even if we have been given real hope of an effective vaccine on its way in the coming months.
Over the past two weeks, we have seen a dramatic increase in the numbers of infections among us. Though we had certainly hoped to avoid a second wave this fall, its clear that our country has not yet succeeded in stopping the rate of infections or effectively slowing the way one person can infect even several others. This virus has never fully left us, but it is again knocking at our doors with a new ferocity.
New England case rates have remained lower overall than other parts of the country, but all of our numbers in New England are rising and rising quickly, indicating a potentially exponential spread of the virus in the coming weeks. The chief means by which this virus is skyrocketing is by small group gatherings, including religious and sporting events.
The Diocesan Short Term COVID response team is closely monitoring the spread of the virus county by county in New Hampshire through the COVID Act Now website. They are working on a Frequently Asked Questions guide that will answer questions that have been arising such as; What creative worship alternatives are our churches in this diocese offering?
Now, in New Hampshire, our church has relied on the wise, prudent, compassionate caution that each of our congregations has demonstrated to prevent us being a means of infection. We have sought to be the means of God’s grace and health and not sickness.
I want to express how deeply and utterly thankful I am for the leadership of our clergy and lay leaders who have been straining to do just that, to be means of health, hope, God’s presence, even as we are called into this period of exile. Words cannot convey the depth of gratitude and admiration that your care and collegiality mean to me. It is truly astounding, inspiring and I believe, inspired of God.
Now our approach thus far has been one of what we call "Guided Autonomy." And that principle remains. We need to trust each other to do the right things in the coming months. Medical professionals and scientists expect this to be hard winter, and it is with both sadness and grief and resolve that we will meet the journey ahead. Each of our congregations still has autonomy, but I want to stress, emphasize, counsel us all to slow down our plans to have indoor worship together for the time being. Please. God loves you, God loves your neighbor, and God loves our church too much for us to risk our lives by this virus.
I believe God, and I know your bishop, simply love you too much to ask you to go back to our sanctuaries when they are not sanctuaries from this potentially fatal disease.
Having said that, God does not want you to be comfortless. Nor do I. And so I would like to make a more hopeful announcement.
Before the First Sunday of Advent, on November 29th, we will make available to our church in New Hampshire a service where we can share a sacred meal of bread and wine together via zoom or other means of broadcasting. Known as an Agape or Love Feast, our ancestors in the faith, both Jews and early Christians, celebrated and called forth God’s love and redeeming Presence by sharing a meal where ever they found themselves, whether it was wandering in the desert, or in a prolonged period of exile, or after the destruction of a Temple or sanctuary, in times of disease and distress.
I am not going to say what this meal that we will share together beginning in Advent means or does not mean for us, except to say that it is what God makes available to us now. I hope it will offer us, each of us and our communities, the comfort, the assurance, the blessing, the means of reconciliation, and spiritual endurance and nourishment that our community so needs for the extended road ahead.
I will offer the prayers on the First Sunday of Advent on what is coming to be our Virtual Cathedral on Zoom and YouTube Live. The Liturgy Committee is working hard to prepare an instructional video and a brochure so that you can, at last, “Try this at home!”
Just as many of our Jewish friends worship at home every Friday evening with a Shabbat meal, which is a recitation of the Passover Meal, the simple meal of bread and wine that we envision will be a new source of resilience for our local parishes and diocese for the time ahead.
May our prayers, our actions and our commitment to God and each other in Christ continue to support and even enliven and deepen our faith. May our Lord Jesus Christ come among us in a new and needed way this Advent and Christmas.
We live in God’s re-creative power and presence,
We live in truth that the rising of Jesus Christ from the dead assures us that we have not even death to fear,
We live in the power of the Holy Spirit which sends us new creative blessings every hour and every day.
May God bless you with joy, hope and love, today and always.
WATCH BISHOP ROB’S VIDEO HERE
A Prayer from Bishop Rob - How Little I Have Known You
O Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee, I’m just beginning to see how little I have known you.
A Prayer From Bishop Rob: How Little I Have Known You
A Prayer From Bishop Rob: How Little I Have Known You
O Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee, I’m just beginning to see how little I have known you.
You didn’t talk like me, in the accent of a New England prep school or the Ivy League, or with the elegant linguistic economy of the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer — a book you never held in your calloused hands.
The other day, O Jesus, I heard a black man speak. His brother was murdered when a white officer of the law knelt on his neck, suffocating him.
The brother spoke within marbled halls, in an expensively paneled room on Capitol Hill. And he used language — nothing profane and nothing obscene — but language which didn’t sound at all like the way I talk.
And this is a sample of how I was taught to talk about you, O Jesus of Nazareth,
Just as the postmodern sublime is figured through both the fragmentation of form and a (pseudo) regathering sublime is figured through pastiche or bricolage, so too the Christian sublime involves both the shattering the Christ-form upon the cross, and a regathering of that form through the resurrection, a regathering that has an intrinsic element the regathering of the scattered disciples into an ecclesia...
O Jesus of Nazareth, what does that even mean? Would you even recognize that we were talking about YOU in all that code? More likely, we were just talking about ourselves—to people like ourselves.
The language of George Floyd’s brother contained verbs that didn’t always agree in the number of their subjects. Sometimes he said, “I’m axing you...” instead of how I learned to make a request.
And, like John the Baptist, he took an ax to the root of my supremacy. He spoke Truth. More truth, because it came from your own broken heart, O Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee.
I heard him more than I’ve heard anyone witness in those stately leather-chaired rooms before. Rooms where Laws are made. It was the language you more likely spoke than how I speak. Forgive me, O Jesus of Nazareth, I have dismissed your syntax all these long, empty white-washed years.
O Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee, When you were lynched on that hill by the garbage heaps of Jerusalem, by officers of the Law, you cried, “Into your hands I commend my Spirit.”
The Book of Common Prayer took those words and bleached them into such bloodless concepts: oblation, satisfaction, atonement. But what you were saying then and what you’re saying to me now, right now, from the lynching cross, is “I can’t breathe.”
Jesus, I don’t know Black. In college here in New Hampshire, Black writing, Native American writing, Asian American writing, Gay and Lesbian writing were all electives, not serious, believed to come from a lesser muse and inferior talent. If you need a “gut,” take those, I heard, and for heaven’s sake don’t take them seriously. So, I avoided those classes. Gutless.
O Jesus, I could have met you in the strains of Coltrane’s Love Supreme, or Ellison’s Invisible Man, or Morrison’s Song of Solomon, or in Baldwin, or Erdrich, or Angelou, or Hughes, or the songs of Marvin. But in that old oak empaneled English Department, with its afternoon teas and white-buck shoed croquet on the manicured lawn below Baker Tower, —the Tower with the caricatured Indian and the peace-pipe weathervane on top - we all found ways to dismiss your revealed Truth, Truth we substituted for playful and clever theories about semiotics and metaphorical structure. Nothing that would disrupt how to love and move in this world of unlikeness.
O Jesus of Nazareth, they shot you right out of their Western Canon. With the sublime chords of Handel in the background you were, Despised. Rejected over sherry in crystal stemware.
O Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee. They made fun of the way you talked, of who you hung out with, (or should I say whom?). And when you got too uppity, they hung you, from splintered timber, nothing like the clean silver and brass cross I wear while sitting at my desk, air-conditioned.
O Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee. You didn’t look or talk or dress like me. To be honest, Jesus, your friends usually make me nervous. To be honest, O Jesus, more and more you make me nervous. But I trust you.
How long and how many times do I need to remember that I don’t really know many people who look more like you, O Jesus, than who look like me? And so, my dear Lord, the truth is I have not really known you as much as I’ve thought or as much as I’ve claimed.
And I’m not alone. Help us. O Lord Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee. Help us. Amen.
A New Book by Bishop Rob: "With Sighs Too Deep For Words: Grace and Depression.
Bishop Rob has just published a new meditation and prayer companion for those who struggle with depression, With Sighs Too Deep For Words.
The stigma around mental illness in our culture has had a damaging effect on those who suffer from its grip. As a priest and bishop, Bishop Rob has quietly been in treatment for depression for decades. In his book, he now shares his own experience publicly. The Bishop offers short meditations, prayers, and suggestions about how one can follow and call upon Jesus for strength and peace during times of emotional upheaval. For more,
Bishop Rob has just published a new meditation and prayer companion for those who struggle with depression, With Sighs Too Deep For Words.
The stigma around mental illness in our culture has had a damaging effect on those who suffer from its grip. As a priest and bishop, Bishop Rob has quietly been in treatment for depression for decades. In his book, he now shares his own experience publicly. The Bishop offers short meditations, prayers, and suggestions about how one can follow and call upon Jesus for strength and peace during times of emotional upheaval. For more,
“My depression continues to teach me about God’s love and grace,” said Bishop Rob. “I wrote in the hope that my experience might resonate with others who bear similar pain and struggle. My intent is to offer some hope to those who experience depression, especially those who have swallowed the dangerous myth that mental illness is somehow a moral flaw, or a sign of God’s judgment, a myth that is tempting to believe—or at least it has been for me.”
The Bishop’s book, with its prayers and practical suggestions for spiritual and creative practices and resilience, can be a companion for those who suffer so that they may know more deeply the resilient love of Jesus.
With Sighs Too Deep For Words is available at local independent NH booksellers including Gibson’s in Concord, the Bookery in Manchester, and Toadstools in Keene, Nashua, and Peterborough, as well as Church Publishing (www.churchpublishing.org/withsighstoodeepforwords), Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.
Following the Good Shepherd Version 3.0
As the state of New Hampshire announces its “Safer at Home Advisory” and continues on the path of re-opening for business, employment, and services, Bishop Rob shares this “3.0” document to provide continued guidance regarding how we may go about regathering in our churches.
Province 1 Bishops' Response to President Trump's Actions at St. John's Church in Washington, DC
New England Episcopal bishops respond with one voice to President’s “cynical” photo-op by calling out “the abomination of continued oppression of and violence against people of color in this nation”
What President Trump did in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square on the evening of June 1 was disgraceful and morally repugnant. Displaying a Bible from which he did not quote, using as a mere backdrop an Episcopal church where he did not pray, and – more callously – ordering law enforcement to clear, with force and tear gas, a path through demonstrators who had gathered in peace, President Trump distorted for his own purposes the cherished symbols of our faith to condone and stoke yet more violence.
Bishop Hirschfeld's Pentecost Sermon
Each year on this day we celebrate the birthday of the church. Normally it is a day of joy and exuberance as we open ourselves to the possibility for God’s renewal, for a fresh inhale of God’s life-giving, light bearing Spirit. The Holy Spirit, the breath of God, that brooded over the chaos before the creation, that shapes a random mess of particles into atoms and mass, and life, and meaning and purpose. The Holy Spirit that invades all boundaries and isolated individual interests to form communities of love and concern and compassion. For more, click HERE
Say Their Names
As bishop, I invite the membership of our parishes to listen to this list of these individuals, each created in the beautiful and strong image of God. I don’t care if you learn about the Parthians, the Medes, the Elamites, the Phrygians and all the rest this year. I urge you to listen to these names As you hear or read these names, please invite the Holy Spirit to choose a name for you to come alongside in the coming weeks of what may be a long summer. Say the name in your daily prayers. Learn who that person was. Learn when and where they were born. To read more, click HERE
Bishop Rob's Letter Regarding Stay at Home 2.0: Places of Worship
May 30, 2020
On Friday May 29, Governor Chris Sununu shared a document, Stay at Home 2.0: Places of Worship, that ostensibly allows houses of worship to begin re-admitting worshippers to their sacred spaces for religious services only. I am grateful that the Governor takes seriously the particular complexities of risk and demand that we all face as we contemplate gathering again for religious services. The Governor’s order is informed by the advice of health professionals, immunologists, as well as members of various religious communities in New Hampshire. To read more, Click HERE.
The Church and Stay at Home 2.0: Following the Good Shepherd and the Path Ahead
Dear Clergy and Lay Leaders,
As the state of New Hampshire begins to walk towards a gradual "re-opening" of the state - for business, employment, and services - while maintaining important public health measures to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, I am sharing this document to provide guidance about how we might think about "re-opening" our churches.
Following The Good Shepherd On The Path Ahead
As always, the diocesan staff and I welcome your questions and concerns and we stand ready to pray, consult and partner with you now and in the days ahead.
Yours in the Risen Christ,
+Rob
The. Rt. Rev. A. Robert Hirschfeld
Bishop of New Hampshire