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It will be a much sadder day for food-insecure people in America when and if the Trumpublicans succeed in decimating the SNAP (food stamp) and school lunch programs with a $4.2 billion annual cut. 

The sacred myth of Christmas enchants us into life, birthing us as children of God.  The gospel story of the conception and birth of Jesus comes alive for us again, in our own transformation from the mundane to the divine.  The story is about us. 

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.  (Paul, Ephesians 6:12, NRSV)

Imagine Bernie Sanders’ public policy prescriptions woven into a fundamentalist Christian religious tract.

Does that idea hurt your head?

Well, it’s not a new one.

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 

I’ve been introducing scripture passages this way from the pulpit for decades.  At first I was a bit nervous about speaking my mind in such an unambiguous fashion.  But when I discovered that hardly any parishioners blinked, I lost my trepidation. 

There’s no cookie-cutter answer to that question. There’s no one “secret sauce” to sprinkle on a church to bring it alive. But from each other, churches can discover ingredients for the recipes for vitality that will work for them. 

I’ve mused to myself that my daily hikes are “God-walks”.  God holds an invisible leash attached to me, and I follow where God leads.   Understanding that I’m on a God-walk snaps me out of the small-“s” selfishness of thinking that my life is my own, that I make all my own decisions consciously, that I’m the master of my own fate and the captain of my own ship. 

We must have the freedom to seek the truth and follow where it leads us, or we will lose our democracy and lose our faith.  Good religion is a foundation for democracy, and democracy is a foundation for the flourishing of good religion.

Beauty is a trap. A trap set all around me, as I walk to and from the Metro Red Line Subway station at Hollywood and Vine on my daily commute. Huge electronic billboards depicting idealized, unrealistically beautiful people demand the attention of the little, actual humans scurrying around on the sidewalks below.

Softly and tenderly Jesus is callingCalling for you and for meWalking his pathway toward joy and compassionCalling for you and for me

The Song of Solomon is a steamy romance between a man and a woman.  For thousands of years, Jewish and Christian theologians attempted to define the Song of Solomon as a long allegory about God’s love for humanity.  God was the lover and human beings were the beloved.  This was a creative interpretation of the text, but certainly not the first meaning that leaps off the pages.

If a woman is denied the right to choose for herself whether or not to complete a pregnancy, in what sense can she, or any of us, claim rights of any kind? 

As we grapple with the existential crisis of human-caused climate change, we will have a hard time making the transition away from fossil fuels if we show disrespect to the people in this industry.  We must carefully craft our language to attract rather than insult the people who labor still to this day, extracting the fuels that power our vehicles and warm our houses. 

Christianity appears impossible if we focus on the admonitions in the New Testament that Jesus gave his followers. Love your enemies? Good luck with that. Turn the other cheek? Ouch. If a creditor demands your coat, give him your cloak as well? That means you’ll be left naked. If a man lusts after a woman who is not his wife, he’s an adulterer. No heterosexual male can pretend to meet that standard. And the list goes on – culminating in Jesus’ demand that we be perfect, as God is perfect. Nobody can fully follow his marching orders.

Rachel Held Evans came of age in the Bible Belt.   A budding journalist and blogger, her writing began to reflect her doubts about the version of Christianity in which she was raised. 

“I want to be free!” screamed Little Flower, as loudly as she could – which wasn’t very.All the flowers around her sighed in the breeze.  “There she goes again….””I want to fly!” she roared, though it sounded more like a whimper.

The profundity of Christianity is that nothing in it has but one meaning.

So it is with Easter Week.

Went with the gotta go urge
On a week ending, road bending
Wheels a turning ramble
Past the malls and urban tangle

Imagine that you memorize a book of recipes.  You quote passages from the recipes, with breathless enthusiasm, to other people – whether they care to listen or not.  You follow each recipe to the letter.  You chop and mix and bake and cook according to the instructions.  You show off the finished product, proclaiming its absolute superiority to all others.

But you never bother to eat the food.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

If God is love, then God is something we do, rather than somebody or something we try to believe in. If God is love, then God is a relationship, and not a Guy in the Sky or some other kind of supernatural entity. If God is love, God is nothing to fear. If God is love, when we really love someone – even of another religion, or of no religion at all – God is in that relationship, blessing it. So these three words wipe away all the theological debates about science and common sense versus religion. These three words sweep away the problem of evil, the perennial conundrum of how an all-powerful God could love people while allowing horrible things to happen to them. If God is love, then God is not in charge of the universe. Love is extremely powerful, but it is not directive. Love does not force anybody to do anything, nor to force anything to do anything to anybody. If God is love, then God is omni-attractive, not omni-potent.

I am the church, and this is my confession.  My last confession was 500 years ago.  I have oppressed women and kept them out of leadership positions.  I have oppressed gay and lesbian people.  I have judged people pointlessly for having normal sexual urges and relationships, treating sex like a disease instead of lifting it up as a precious gift from God. 

My mind is a maze with the turns of the journey

The wise men wandered while aimed at the star

Their ears had the form of the wings of the angels

Attuned to the music they sang from afar

Lisa Miller, professor at Columbia University, is a leading researcher into the new scientific field of “natural spirituality”, which she describes in her 2015 book, The Spiritual Child. There are now separate neurophysiological metrics for the human relationship with the transcendent, a realm that until recently was folded into psychology and sociology. Miller has popularized awareness of spirituality as a distinct developmental process, to be taken as seriously by parents and scientists as physical and psychological growth.

It’s been a thing for a while in Silicon Valley. Computer engineers, seeking a creative edge, take small doses of hallucinogens on a regular basis. They claim it enhances their problem-solving capacities without impairing their ability to function. (Having lived in that part of the world for over two decades, I can attest that while IQ’s are high in Silicon Valley, EQ’s – emotional intelligence quotients – are often not up to par. Folks in that business already get away with odd behavior, so who notices or cares if they microdose on the job?)

Hearing about this phenomenon got me to thinking. What else could people microdose, to good effect? Then it dawned on me that Christianity might well be a candidate.

Bless the hands that vote. Ask people you meet: “With which hand will you be voting in November?” Grasp that hand, look the person in the eyes, and bless them, saying: “May love guide your hand to vote for the common good.” Voting is a ritual. By putting even more ritual into it, by getting people implicitly committing to vote, we engage them in the ritual and increase the likelihood that they’ll show up and do it.

A lot of people think they know what Christians are against:  gays, lesbians, the right to an abortion, other religions – and the list goes on.

But do they know what Christians are for?

Every so often, I read the Sermon on the Mount, to get back to the basics of my faith.

I read it last week, and had a revelation: the Christian life is impossible.

It is a tough time to be a Catholic Christian. The current scandals of sexual abuse, by priests around the world, follow a nearly 20-year run of similar episodes. But the lack of transparency in the Catholic Church is no news. Two decades ago, I discussed the problem with my dear friends from Rome. They were shocked that Americans were so shocked. “What is the big deal? Why the fuss?” they asked, waving their hands above their heads. “We Italians have always known better than to leave our children alone with priests!” I found their response both hilarious and appalling. But can we expect any real change of behavior in the Catholic Church as long as it remains a male-dominated monarchy?

This is a good time to reconsider the outlandish words of Ken Kesey and Tim Leary. What would America be like – what would the world be like – if everyone had psychedelic experiences? More specifically, had them with a healthy, positive “set” and “setting”, and with a sensitive guide? What if everyone got it, viscerally, with all their senses convicting them unassailably, that Love is God, and that every grain of sand and every ant crawling on the ground is suffused with this Divine Love, and that everything and everybody are crowns of creation to be encountered with reverent awe?

Contemplatio
Interfaith Mindfulness-Based Contemplative Prayer
by James Burklo on August 16, 2018 | No Reviews or Comments
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A 12th c French Catholic Christian monk, Guigo II, described the spiritual life as climbing a ladder. The steps were lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio – reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation. This “ladder” has defined Catholic Christian spiritual discipline ever since. An ancient practice, employed increasingly today in churches both Catholic and Protestant, is called “Lectio Divina”. It follows Guigo’s four steps.

Every day at my job, I witness and celebrate America’s religious freedom in action. Through our Office of Religious Life, over 70 religious clubs from all the world’s faiths, including a secular humanist club, practice their traditions in harmony with each other. They compete with each other openly in the “marketplace” of ideas and practices on campus, with respect for each other and gratitude for the liberty they all enjoy. None of them complain to us that they are in any way oppressed or stifled. We’re a private campus, so we could impose all sorts of restrictions on them that would not be possible in the wider public sphere. But they have all the rights they’d have at a publicly-owned university, as well as many extra benefits for all of them – without any one faith tradition getting special privileges. What happens at the University Religious Center at USC is what real religious freedom looks like in America, and it’s a beautiful thing.

“Who is my neighbor?” the lawyer asked, leading Jesus to tell the story of the Good Samaritan.  Every kid in America was neighbor to every other when they entered into Mr. Rogers’ realm. 

God and I began our hike at the arroyo behind the museums at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico.  I was not particularly aware of my Companion as my boots imprinted themselves on the fine sand.  It was a hot day, for which I prepared by soaking my shirt and handkerchief in water.  Zig-zagged up the trail of pale dust, then along a ridge stippled with rocks, spiky yucca, and scrubby junipers.  The vast gouge of the Piedra Lumbre basin appeared to the west, streaked with layers of red sediment.  The yellow-orange walls of the canyons above Ghost Ranch to the east glowed in the roaring sun.  Clouds slowly boiled out of pale mist high in the northern sky.  Shadowed cliffs radiated back-lit color.  I turned my slack-jawed head one way to drink in the beauty, then turned, turned again, and on returning my gaze discovered fresh aspects of light and shadow: never the same view twice.  

http://tcpc.blogs.com/musings/2017/09/resistance-bible-study.html