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Martin Elfert

The Rev. Martin Elfert is an immigrant to the Christian faith. After the birth of his first child, he began to wonder about the ways in which God was at work in his life and in the world. In response to this wondering, he joined Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he and his new son were baptized at the Easter Vigil in 2005 and where the community encouraged him to seek ordination. Martin served on the staff of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Spokane, Wash. from 2011-2015. He is now the rector of Grace Memorial Episcopal Church in Portland, Oreg.
Commentary

6 Ways The Church Can Respond to the D.C. Mob

What do you do after an experience of desecration such as this? What, in particular, do we do as church?
Commentary

Found: The Story of The Lost Magi

Losing stuff drives me to distraction. I totally empathize with the characters in Jesus’ stories who search for things. Just like the woman who loses the coin and the shepherd who loses the sheep, when my keys go missing it’s hard for me to do much except to search and mutter.
Commentary

Kristof’s article a reminder that we need to examine sites like “Pornhub” and name its secrets

What if we terminated our contract with silence around porn? And what if our neighbour’s moral help allowed us to live in a way that is more free, more joyous, more kind?
Commentary

A home disaster, and a metaphor for 2020

Ultimately, a wet floor and a bunch of dudes with power tools taking over our kitchen isn’t an especially big deal. And maybe that’s what makes this flood just the right metaphor for us: now and almost always, other folks have problems that make ours look pretty trivial.
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Categorize Things, Not People

Categories are both immensely useful and an immense barrier to human connection.
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COVID-19: Whose Fault Is It?

Maybe it is a question that we are, all of us, living right now: Whose fault is it that we are enduring a global pandemic?
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Mitt Romney an example of integrity

Like a great many people across our country, I was both surprised and moved as I listened to Mitt Romney speak on Wednesday. What caught my attention was not the decision that he reached – evaluating that decision, be it wrong, right, or somewhere in between, is the domain of a political commentator rather than a pastor – but rather it was the way that he spoke of making it.
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