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There are places in the world that hold a special energy. You can feel it when you go there.

Some of the best advice I ever got from my spiritual director was to read Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. “This will change how you think about Jesus,” she said.

We’ve heard the story of Holy Week so many times that we’ve come to think there couldn’t possibly be another way to tell it.

“Preaching, teaching and healing” is the usual description of Jesus’ ministry.

Whatever your own stance is on interpreting the Bible, there’s no denying its place as a foundational source of literary references in our culture.

“God is a verb” — one of those phrases that occurs independently to different people and then keeps showing up.

To listen attentively is a great gift. It is more than just being quiet (or, as author Simon Sinek puts it, “There is a difference between listening and waiting for your turn to speak.”).

There is an old, old story told in many cultures that goes something like this:

Beginnings and endings are so connected… every beginning will eventually have an ending, and every ending makes possible a new beginning.

Grief comes in all sizes, because loss comes in all sizes. Small sadnesses happen every day, and we mark them and move on. Intense sadness comes to everyone eventually, and we struggle not to be overwhelmed by it.

Metanoia is a word worth learning. The Greek means literally “change your understanding” or “think differently.” In our modern parlance we might say, “Awaken!”

Progressive Christianity lost one of its giants last week with the death of Marcus Borg. His books and lectures opened up the academic world of historical Jesus studies to the rest of us, and we will be forever in his debt.

Audacious prayer is the cry of the heart. Mahatma Gandhi once wrote, “In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”

In one sense, New Year’s Day is no different than any other day. After all, the calendar we live by is a human construction.

Christmas Eve is the culmination of the anticipation and preparation of Advent. This is what we have been waiting for and now it is here. Traditions – whatever yours are – hold comfort and connection. For a little while, our world keeps a different kind of time.

Reflecting on the birth of Jesus in poetry gives us yet another way to approach and assimilate this event. Birth is always a miraculous occurrence, and this birth even more so.

Worship is a ‘receipt’ given to God in return for the divine gifts of life which we receive…. It is an artful response to our awe and wonderment at the miracle of creation which surrounds us…..

Resurrection opportunities abound. Whenever we have faced a fear, a challenge, a death of some sort, and walked through the metaphorical fire to emerge re-born on the other side

Favorite metaphors for the manifestation of Spirit include fire, white doves, and wind. What they have in common is movement…

On the surface, it seems that death is triumphant.
It appears as though those who conspired to do evil have won.

Bring, O morn, thy music!
Night, thy starlit silence!
Oceans, laugh in rapture to the storm-winds coursing free!
Suns and planets chorus,
praise to all found holy. ­
Life was, and is, and evermore shall be.

This service is appropriate for a small congregation of 20-60 people. The service is conducted in two settings:

In the brilliant sunshine, in the city street,
Hear the bright hosannas, hear the marching feet;

God is a verb
Living within you and me
Fleshing our flesh
Rejoicing our joy
Crying our sorrow
And empowering us to swim upstream.

I see God in
the instruments and the mechanisms that
work
reliably,
more reliably than the limited sensory departments of
the human mechanism.

Spiritual growth always happens most when we cross borders,
in whatever form those borders take.
God did not create borders.
Humans did.

We light these lights
for the instigators and the refusers
the obstinate and unyielding
for the ones who kept marching

Links to collections of worship liturgies on the theme of care of the Earth

Leader: Holy God of surprises,
we hear you call us to a new way of being.

The SALT Project is a not-for-profit project committed to creating beautiful and theologically interesting church media!

For the darkness of waiting
Of not knowing what is to come
Of staying ready and quiet and attentive,
We praise you, o God.

Bound within by my own mind,
And a day not left behind.
Circling round the memory stays,
Echoing through all my days.

Love, care, lend, do good;
Only with our closest friends
As they will for us.

God’s Love
 Priest: Dear friends, God is love. We love because God first loved us and in baptism we respond to that love.

One of Marcus Borg’s favorite examples of how poetry enriches liturgy:

Now the star of Christmas
shines into our day,
points a new direction:
change is on the way –