Whatever paradigm a community may favor (or more than one among community members), the core of Christian faith and what Jesus emphasized — the centrality of love in action — can be the community emphasis as well.
read more
The recent horrible shooting incident at a premier showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Colorado has focused attention, once again, on some aspects of what has gone wrong when a person takes such a violent and antisocial turn.
read more
“Take sides, because neutrality always serves the oppressor and never the oppressed. Your silence will always be interpreted as consent. There is no honor in remaining neutral in matters of ethical importance. Always taking the middle ground doesn’t make you smart, it doesn’t make you fair, it doesn’t make you balanced, and it certainly doesn’t make you innocent.”
read more
Do you know how to catch a raccoon? I mean good old backwoods ingenuity, no guns, no weapons of mass destruction. Well, I didn’t know either, until some years ago…
read more
Just when I thought I had it all figured out, Lord,
things change again.
When will I be able to rest
in the comfort of knowing what comes next?
Wisdom is often mistaken as knowledge, prudence or pragmatism; whereas foolishness is equally regarded sometimes to be the kind of fool-hearted thing Jesus would have characteristically espoused with many of his confounding ideas about God, God’s ways and how we ought to treat one another. Truth be told, there are plenty of people who consider themselves much too smart to take seriously some of the darn fool things Jesus actually said and meant. But Jesus was no ordinary fool. A Words and Ways Commentary by John Bennison.
read more
Abiding Spirit, you know us, and all of your Creation, better than we know ourselves.
read more
Who can know the different pathways
that have brought us to this day,
sharp felt scars, forgotten mem’ries
words affirm, or facts betray?
It lurks in the shadows, hidden from our vision;
It lurks in the shadows, often disguised with patronizing deeds;
A “christening” type of ceremony for a family that did not want to use traditional baptism terminology.
read more
It is that elusive and intangible spirit that is within us … that constitutes both that tenuous thread and tether of a relationship with whatever we might call the holy divine.
read more
Somewhere between zen and folktales, somewhere between child’s play and wisdom, somewhere between dreaming the world and healing it. Read these stories aloud – to your child, to your love, or to yourself beneath a sacred tree.
read more
“…In the end, however, the deepest language of the soul is silence.”
read more
O God
We have said, “Your word is a lamp for our feet, a light for our path.”
Sometimes it seems more like a flickering candle.
A non-canonical liturgy from the first century.
read more
Hymn words from David Stevenson…”. Welcome doubt! Refine our thinking, Urge us further into light; Lead us to a greater dawning. From the shadows of our night…”
read more
May the God you see in all the colors of creation arouse in you a sense of awe and wonder.
read more
