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Water — just a liquid or much more? Many researchers are convinced that water is capable of “memory” by storing information and retrieving it. The possible applications are innumerable: limitless retention and storage capacity and the key to discovering the origins of life on our planet. Research into water is just beginning.

The fight against the Dakota Access pipeline has brought together a historic gathering of tribes from across North America.

Save the planet and you will save its creatures. That point seems obvious. It turns out, however, that the reverse may be true, too.

A growing body of research suggests that the decline of many of Earth’s largest and most majestic animals—such as elephants, wolves and whales—could actually speed global warming because of the under-appreciated role they play in mopping up carbon dioxide emissions.

Plants and microbes have gotten most of the attention for their ability to store carbon. But a small group of scientists is showing that some animals can influence the types—and numbers—of plants that populate their environments.

With more than half of the world’s largest land animals already either threatened or endangered, the goal is to highlight a hidden climate benefit of species conservation before it’s too late.

The book provides a biblical foundation for honoring the Earth through demonstrating God’s compassion for the earth, that all he made was good. It reveals the beauty of many of the countries in which she has traveled as well as environmental crisis plaguing some of these countries. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of the environment such as the flora, the fauna, clean air, the lack of clean water, and the global warming energy crisis as well as the consequences when there is failure to heed scientific warnings of future peril.

Life is full of these kinds of sacred signs, when we are open to them. They are like the sign posts pointing us down the paths of our dreams. They are like the nudges our loving mothers give us to move forward in spite of our fears. They are the reminders of what we already know but have mostly forgotten, like the dreams that fade when awakening. I know I am on the right path, when things easily fall into place and magical moments occur.

For my feeble mind, whether god is a Cosmic Person or Being-Itself is a question beyond my ability to think. And I can’t even understand quantum theory, much less see how god fits into it. It’s a reality almost impossible to conceive, and particle physicists themselves have no consensus. Finally, it seems, theology shares incomprehensibility with another discipline! Both god and science transcend our ability to comprehend. Stay tuned for further developments in this breaking story. Maybe the quantum physicists will have an answer. In the meanwhile, I’ll listen to the heavenly chorus of the mockingbird.

… if we begin our reflection with the Jesus/disciple encounter, the line of demarcation between faith and science is that faith sees the cosmos as informed by love, and science does not. That’s basic. But seeing the world as informed by love can be true not only of people of faith, but of people of all convictions, faith and non-faith, round the world. Just recently there was a report about a study that shows how compassion not only benefits the receiver but the giver as well. Seems as though there is something in our genes that rejoices in helping others. As I said earlier, that was the fundamental message of Jesus’ disciples, that the meaning of the resurrection is not a resuscitated body, but the omnipotence of love and compassion. Available to all.

What are the big questions that religion answers?

I know what you are thinking, this being St. Andrew’s, and St. Andrew’s being a good liberal Protestant church: “Bob, it’s not about answers but about living the questions.”

We can say that, yet we do need answers. Questions are fine in church, but we live day-to-day by answers, no matter how tentative and incomplete they may have to be. Whether or not there are any definitive ones to be found, we’re all hunting for answers.

One traditional formulation of the questions that various religions seek to answer is: Where did we come from? What happens to us when we die? How are we to live?

You should be spending as much as 50% of your time on communications, I told a group of clergy at the Kenyon Institute’s “Beyond Walls” writing seminar for religious professionals.

That means time spent blogging to the vast world outside your walls, engaging with prospects, and communicating with your flocks. It means email campaigns, as well as ad hoc emailing. It means creative use of social media, especially Facebook. It means messaging. But always, three audiences, and distinct messages tailored to the questions, hungers, issues, yearnings that actually occupy each audience.

As in any art form, as we release judgment, silence our mind, breathe deep into the process, and find bliss in each step; we realize that we are boundlessly assisted in our authentic and heart-centered expression. We step out of the way. We realize that the Art is not born of us, but through us, and in this understanding we are humbled, yet profoundly empowered. Each creation is an offering: a positive reflection of ourselves and humanity, a celebration of evolving consciousness, an opportunity for healing and deepening, a vision of a bright future and Now.

… believing in god and a universe of love is no more difficult than believing in the expanding universe, a multiverse, reality as a probability curve, or the entanglement of particles. What science today sets forth as reality is about as bizarre as an active god sitting on a heavenly throne. Of course, there is proof that the science is true. And is there no proof that god is real. Or is there? One might argue that those moments that we all experience (see below) would lead us to suspect that there is a cosmic Thou behind those experiences. Does not homo sapiens have a sense of the Holy, an intuition that there is more to life and reality than meets the eye? We’ll take a look at that. But first, evolution.

At the root of the current political, economic, cultural, and ecological chaos is a national spiritual unrest, a fragmentation that has inhibited society’s self-awareness and slowed theological progress to a glacial crawl.

In a nation where three-fourths of the population identifies as Christian and religion salts the political discourse, unrest has manifested itself as the talking-head debate between atheists and believers. In All My Bones Shake, Robert Jensen reveals the multitiered complexity of the conflict and offers a progressive approach to its key theological questions. While fundamentalists on both sides have fought to an intellectual standstill and moderates seem content to ignore the battle, Jensen pushes for answers that make sense for anyone trying to exist in the modern scientific world, concluding, “There is no God, and more than ever we all need to serve the One True Gods.”

Moving beyond the deep-seated cultural feelings of shame that have long fueled the conflict between Christianity and sex—and the belief that there is only one right and valid way to practice one’s sexuality—this renowned University of Chicago pastor uses enlightening personal stories and examples from theology to show how sex is powerful and holy.

  If God exists, does he care about his evolving, suffering world? Most answers are unsatisfactory. Morris’s book is different: short but not superficial, strong in its science and philosophy, and realistic as a carer of a …

Last month, PCU leadership discussed our need to respond to anti-transgender rhetoric and discrimination in our society. It’s easy to condemn bigotry but harder to think of creative ways to respond. We determined that we would find a way to promote gender-inclusive bathroom signs in progressive churches.

We found an organization making such signs, and they have agreed to sell them to any church who wants one at a discount of 40% from their regular price. Just go to their website, pick out the sign you want to purchase (can choose color, shape, and image) and put in the following code: PCU40. You can read more about the campaign here.

There are three parts to this little book. The first takes a new look at who Jesus was and what he did. The second describes four characteristics of human life. The third considers some of the perplexing questions of theology. Taken together, they represent an integrated attempt to understand our common humanity as children of God and are offered as a contribution to the on-going dialogue.

Join Jason Silva as he freestyles complex systems of society, technology and human existence and discusses the truth and beauty of science in a form of existential jazz.