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About 600 years before the writers of the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke penned Jesus’ Parable of the Mustard Seed, Buddha told a parable of a mustard seed.

If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you’ve probably gone through the struggle of whether or not you should commit yourself to a life of ministry. Everyone goes through the question sooner or later. Should you quit your day job and become a pastor? What about a full-time missionary? Perhaps closing yourself in your room to pray from morning to night is the answer.

*** This page has moved – please click here to Order Hard Copy and DVD. To see all Purchase Options Please Click Here. ***   Progressive Christian Spiritual Curriculum Compassionate, Intelligent, Inter-Spiritual, Non-Dogmatic   Group Curriculum with …

*** This page has moved – please click here to Order Hard Copy and DVD. To see all Purchase Options Please Click Here. ***   ———————————————————————————————- Progressive Christian Spiritual Curriculum Compassionate, Intelligent, Inter-Spiritual, Non-Dogmatic   Group Curriculum …

In A Joyful Path, Year Two, we focus on some of the main tenets of Progressive Christianity and Spirituality, giving our children the foundation they need to walk the path of Jesus in today’s world. It has stories and affirmations written to help children clarify their own personal beliefs while staying open to the wisdom of other traditions.

I’m not a Buddhist, but I love what Lao-tzu the Chinese prophet writes in the 70th verse of the Tao Te Ching (interpreted by Wayne Dyer). I find all of the verses (81) are full of wisdom and common sense. I suspect, perhaps, that Jesus might have known of Lao-Tzu’s writings, as so much of what he taught are very similar. Certainly Lao-Tzu’s wisdom was passed down through the ages the 500 years before Jesus.

Nature-based soul-guide, Rev. Matt Syrdal, is re-wilding what it means to be human. His work weaves in myth and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world in which they are a part.

Dorian Gray was above it all, privileged and pampered and proud, without good promise or purpose. Wilde’s implication is that conscience is necessary for the soul to survive.“What does it profit a person if, in gaining the whole world, loses the soul?”

How to ‘be there’ for the people who need you most.

Join Pastor Tony Minear, Ph.D. as he explores how the words we use and the metaphors we devise to describe God can not only limit our perceptions of the divine but exclude a whole other dimension of the divine as mother.

Why do we seem inherently unable to be more responsive to the world’s needs; where instead we seem instinctually inclined to put ourselves and our own needs ahead of everything and everyone else? What might we do to be less inclined to reflect what seems to be so much a part of our human nature? If there is anything akin to a sacred spark within us, with the example of Jesus’ own way of the cross?

Mothers’ Day is not on the church’s liturgical calendar and yet the statisticians tell us that church attendance on Mothers’ Day is surpassed only by Christmas and Easter. Worship leaders who fail to mark the importance of this day do so at their peril; the same kind of peril that compels so many reluctant offspring to accompany their mothers to church. However, a simple liturgical nod in the direction of mothers or an over-the-top sentimental sermon all too often fails to capture the magnitude of the day’s significance in the history of women.

The 19th century English poet and mystic William Blake summed it up well when he said, “We are put on earth for a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love.”
The spiritual teacher Henri Nouwen added that our time on earth is a brief span to say to God, “I love you too.”

The world is not short on hostile insults and senseless arguments, but the world is quite bereft of kindness. Much of the social hostility we encounter comes from the pain that people have experienced that we know nothing about. We are surrounded by the walking wounded who do not need to discover how quick we can be with an eviscerating retort. What they need from us is kindness . . . undeserved, perhaps, but we can help the world to become more deserving if we will scatter seeds of kindness.

I get the idea: thinking leads to judgment, and judgment leads to problems.

No one likes to eat alone; to approach a table filled with people, only to be told that despite the open chairs there isn’t room for you. The rejection stings. It leaves a mark. Yet this is exactly what the church has been saying to far too many people for far too long: “You’re not welcome here. Find someplace else to sit.” How can we extend unconditional welcome and acceptance in a world increasingly marked by bigotry, fear, and exclusion?

“Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstances whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.”

If there is any one message the Bible delivers, it is the message that God loves outcasts and that Jesus was born into the world an outcast to rescue and renew outcasts from religion gone bad. He was born poor and died poor, yet the legacy of love he left us, the legacy of inclusion and acceptance and understanding, will endure forever.