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While visiting Jerusalem in November 2017, I attended an interfaith book launch for a book written by a Palestinian Arab Christian. At the reception, I spoke with an Evangelical Lutheran pastor about her church in Jerusalem and asked how Jews, Christians and Muslims treated the LGBTQUI community in the Holy Lands. She told me that many of the people in her congregation had “bound consciences.” She then explained that those two words meant the church members were working out how to accept the gay community in both their personal and their church lives. Huh?

Wangari Muta Maathai was an internationally renowned Kenyan environmental political activist and Nobel laureate.

Maybe it is that I am casting old eyes aside
cautiously lingering after my two old friends that served
Maybe this is the time of slow wandering to ponder lost moments
Careful to seek a place where stern voices cannot find me
Willing to go anywhere at this unfamiliar pace to open new eyes

This is something I can not understand about humans. I see in humans the same fierceness as we have, but it comes from Fear. Don’t you know Fear will be the slow death of you? Truly there is nothing to fear. Death is natural, cycles are natural, sickness is natural. These things keep the balance. Like Sun and Moon, we are interconnected in a rhythmic way. You can take from us, yes. But when you take too many of us, you are only hurting all of us, including you.

American democracy is in serious trouble today.  Our president is steadily, insidiously attacking its foundations.  We’re so lost among the trees of his lies, so boggled by the scandals and investigations and hearings, that we have lost sight of the forest.  We’re barraged by news of outrageous incidents, but meanwhile we are losing the view of the much bigger picture.  Trump and the Republicans are denigrating the institutions and public trust that make our Constitution meaningful.  Tyranny seldom comes overnight: it comes after democracy has died by a thousand cuts.

THERE’S AN OLD ED MCCURDY, PET SEEGER SONG THAT GOES; …“LAST NIGHT I HAD THE STRANGEST DREAM I NEVER HAD BEFORE …I DREAMED THAT ALL THE WORLD AGREED TO PUT AN END TO WAR. …AND WHEN THE PAPERS ALL WERE SIGNED AND A MILLION COPIES MADE …THEY ALL JOINED HANDS AND BOWED THEIR HEADS …AND TO THEIR GOD THEY PRAYED. THE PEOPLE IN THE STREETS BELOW WERE DANCING ROUND AND ROUND AND GUNS AND SWORDS AND UNIFORMS WERE SCATTERED ON ..THE GROUND.”

There is a cost to living like Darth Vader. Every piece of armor replaces your own flesh and blood. Every wall between you and someone else means another wall between a part of your own self. You could drape armor over yourself, never leave home without packing firepower and be always on the lookout for danger. Somewhere along the line, perhaps in shades of gray, you lose your humanity and become a hunted beast— always on the lookout, always afraid, always griping this metal extension of your body tightly. No one can shoot you, no one can beat you . . . but is there any “you” left?

We need to stop our striving and building and creating and making because we are making a mess. We know that we are.

Ten years ago, former nightclub promoter Scott Harrison set out to solve the water crisis in his lifetime.

Today, more than one million people have made it their mission too. This is all of our story.

  So, Reverend: how many more Sundays, how many more years, how many more decades do your folks have to wait before you tell them the truth about what you really do and don’t believe?  If you …

Grace is less to be identified with being unaffected by all that is going on around us, and more with being moved by the Spirit to work for peace and justice for all out of loving others as we love ourselves.

Though Bill Cosby was convicted on several charges of sexual assault, he did not show remorse or apologize to his victims. Consider in contrast, the heart-felt apology offered by Joy Reid when old homophobic blog posts of hers recently surfaced. She asked a panel of LGBTQ professionals to publicly take her to task on her own show, a painful but honest moment in journalism.

What follows is a sermon I preached on the 5th Sunday of Easter 2003. In the 18 years since I preached this sermon, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada has come a long way. The debate about the full inclusion of LGBTQ folk in the full life of the church has been resolved and we can truly say: “All are welcome!” But rule changes don’t always change practices. Sadly, there are still places in our church were not everyone is welcome. So, I offer this sermon to cybersapce as both a reminder of where we have been and how far we need to travel. Shalom.

This week we mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Last month was the 50th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre and this June we will reach the 50th anniversary of the killing of Robert Kennedy. These events remembered within the martyr account in the gospel’s passion narrative give us reason to look more deeply into the meaning of Easter, beyond a childish hope for eternal life, there is the challenge to be a prophet who refuses to be afraid.

Patience is not a beast we can slay and master.
Rather, patience is an adversary ever rising to do battle with us again.
The universe seems to conspire to always test our mettle.
We level up, we have more patience than we ever have had, and, again, yet and assuredly again, there arises a new situation that will demand yet more and more of us. We cannot win against patience.
At best, we can keep our calm for longer and longer than ever before.

Trevor Hall plays an acoustic version of ‘Still Water’ on the lava field at Uncle Robert’s Kalapana Ohana on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Question: I am a New Thought Minister who presents the Bible and the Christ in much the same manner as Bishop Spong does in his articles and books. Can the Christ and Christianity survive the adolescence period where all is in flux, change and turmoil and emerge as the loving empowering way of life that Jesus intended and that we so desperately need or will the Fundamentalists win the day? Will we make it to Spiritual Adulthood?

The author of the multiple award-winning “Grounded” and leading trend spotter in contemporary Christianity explores why gratitude is missing as a modern spiritual practice, offers practical suggestions for reclaiming it, and illuminates how the shared practice of gratitude can lead to greater connection with God, our world, and our own souls.