The terms faith and beliefs are sometimes used interchangeably, but I think it is useful to make a distinction between them. Beliefs are things you think are true, like “I believe in God.” “I believe that there is life after death.” These are improvable opinions (or they would be accepted by all as “facts”). A list can be made of beliefs.
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Love one another as I love you all;
In others’ needs hear my insistent call.
I bid you wear with me love’s seamless dress,
Welcome the outcast from the wilderness.
The sign outside the church
said “all are welcome.”
Perhaps they meant to say
all who look like us are welcome,
This Earth is full of beauty
For those with open eyes;
This world is full of wonder
Which makes the pilgrim wise.
Wage peace!
to acknowledge faith
declare love
confess failure
expose injustice
admit mistakes
CLEAR is what I want to feel and be when it comes to something that means as much to me as FAITH. I want to be at peace with what I believe and choose to say and do, with regard to my way of living in faith. I want to own it whole-heartedly. I don’t want to apologize or make excuses for beliefs that don’t make sense, saying things like, “You just have to take that in faith. Someday it will make sense to me, even if it doesn’t now. God’s ways are not our ways.” With Clear Faith, I am at peace.
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As our lives tread onward, we find ourselves on the Earth side of a “door”
Mortality certain to face us, we wonder what’s beyond –what is the “more?”
Sing a new love song; for in every moment, compassion does marvelous things: its power dissipates hate and revenge. Compassion creates contagious miracles
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Presider: It was a dull, tasteless thing;
People: This life, before salt.
Call of the songbird rising to Heaven,
Movement of bird wings rainbows enshrining,
Color of sunset painting the evening,
Scent of the forest fragrance displaying
We are the stewards of this wondrous earth
With all its teeming life of priceless worth;
In all creation God is thus revealed
In birds and beasts, in forests and each field;
May the peace of God surround you
Like the trees of the forest
May the peace of God warm you all over
Like the sun in the sky
A message in a bottle
In an ocean swirled with trash
Would there be someone to read it
If the ecosystem crashed?
As wind that dances lightly round the clouds,
As sighs that come from loving’s warm caress,
As rising air that lofts the soaring bird
God’s Spirit can empower what we express.
Acts was long thought to be a first-century document, and its author Luke to be a disciple of Paul—thus an eyewitness or acquaintance of eyewitnesses to nascent Christianity. Acts was considered history, pure and simple. But the Acts Seminar, a decade-long collaborative project by scholars affiliated with the Westar Institute, concluded that it dates from the second century. That conclusion directly challenges the view of Acts as history and raises a host of new questions, addressed in this final report.
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In this one-on-one interview, bestselling author and MacArthur Prize recipient Elaine Pagels tells a wide-ranging story. She explains how Billy Graham’s preaching sparked her interest in religion, and talks of her early encounters with Gnostic texts and with Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Through the interconnections between the personal and professional, Pagels addresses the problem of how we are to define Christianity meaningfully in ancient and modern times.
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God’s dearest work of art
we long have called the heart,
The depth within from which begin
the prayers that we impart.
