Traditionally this is a time to learn from our mistakes and commit ourselves to do differently in the new year. I wonder what resolutions Jesus would have made? For some, it may seem shocking to suggest that …
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It was carved with hand tools on a rough slab of native red rock: “Marcelito L. Baca – murio a la edad de 17 dias (died at the age of 17 days) – 1919”. It was planted …
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Christmas trees and tinsel
Yule logs and holly
Turkey and Christmas pudding
This past Saturday night, my wife Roberta and I stood with a group of people on Hollywood Boulevard, holding flickering candles. Passers-by might have assumed we were Christmas caroling. But we were holding a vigil for the …
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(From a sermon I gave at Mt Hollywood Congregational Church on 12/2, the first Sunday of Advent.) On one seemingly ordinary day over 2000 years ago, a seemingly ordinary girl had an extraordinary rebirth. Mary abruptly experienced …
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((My wife Roberta and I hope that THIS IS MY SONG will be sung at Obama’s 2nd inauguration in January. It’s “a song of peace for their land and for mine” – just the message America needs …
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What’s a promise worth, any more? Surely one of the most peculiar phenomena in America’s peculiar politics has been Grover Nordquist’s no-tax-increase pledge. It was signed solemnly by countless Republican politicians over the last couple of decades. …
read moreWhen one comes in a never-uttered name
God wins the glory for all that is done:
It’s in hoping for what cannot be claimed
That every inch of justice is won.
I hope it will be a long time from now; I am grateful to be occupying this body today. But when you see this body lying before you in your gross anatomy lab, don’t call it mine. It will be for you, and for all the patients you will serve in your career as a doctor. Cut this body open with deep reverence, not for me, but for the living people whose bodies you will work to heal. My experience of eternal life during the process of my death will transcend this body completely.
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Take some time to join Sharon Salzberg in a seven-minute loving kindness meditation that will open your heart and calm your mind.
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When people most seek him, Jesus runs away.
When people finally get an inkling, a glimpse of who he is, Jesus disappears.
When people at last realize that there is something different about this teacher and healer, Jesus vanishes, eager almost in his need to be absent and alone.
Begin your meal by holding hands and saying to the person on your right: “You are the temple of God and the Holy Spirit dwells within you.”
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Immeasurable compassion is the aspiration, “May all beings be free from suffering and its causes.”
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“We begin to live a sacred life when we start to become a source of blessing through our actions. As we apply the dynamic power of the alchemy of the seed, we set in motion the wheels of a better life.” ~Emory J. Michael
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INTRODUCTION
Who are we? Jesus responded to the Jews preparing to stone him: “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods?'” John 10:34
The growth of a progressive Christian congregation may not lie in its ability to make believers out of skeptics or to talk conventional Christians into switching their loyalties. Rather, the increase in membership is most likely to be the result of evangelism, that is, letting secular discover what others have found of value in the life of the church.
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First celebrated in 1898, the Universal Day of Prayer for Students is observed on the third Sunday of February; in 2010 it is celebrated on February 21st. The UDPS is one of the oldest ecumenical days of prayer. In line with WSCF’s theme for 2010 the UDPS theme is ‘Climate Justice’. Former WSCF Chairperson Rev. Ejike Okoro of Nigeria has prepared the 2010 UDPS liturgy and accompanying Bible study on behalf of the Africa region.
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