The other day I stood in the crisp air of early morning, in the freshness of the dawning light, and knew without question the ecstatic and complex glory of my very simple life, at least for a few minutes. The day was bursting forward without temerity or hesitancy. The sky surrounding me held an eternity [...]
We are a little bit obsessed in our culture around ideas of worth and value. We spend so much of our time running after something, what we might call the “gems,” or running away from other things, the “pebbles,” in the hopes of having a sense of belonging, feeling worthy and valuable. In our [...]
How many think we can use more Golden Rule days? Raise your hands. Did you know there is a Golden Rule Day and it's April 5th? It’s a day to focus on and embody the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would like to have done unto you.” It’s a good rule and [...]
A prayer without desire in it, a prayer without sincerity in it, a prayer without soul in it, a prayer without Spirit in it is a fruitless prayer. - Charles and Cora Fillmore, Teach Us to Pray I was raised with prayer. Prayer before meals, prayers in church, and prayers to give thanks. Prayers were [...]
There will be a time when one will have come such a long way over the high way of God, that the valleys would cease to appear… just the hilltops would appear to us. After we have passed through these valleys which may seem less desirable than the hills, we may look back over the [...]
Yielding self means giving up the old concepts of the past; forgetting ourselves and our human desire to come forth, and just rejoicing that all God’s creation constantly springs forth in newness of life and light and joy and service. -Myrtle Fillmore, co-founder of Unity, 1918 I am a “drama” addict - there I said [...]
Peace is one of those seemingly intangible, shape-shifting things in life, such as love, that molds our lives so intensely. It’s not necessarily something I can hold in my hand or perhaps physically give to you, and there are no words to adequately define the experience or even give a “correct” definition. Yet it is the [...]
It’s been a strange year, which sounds woefully inadequate. Somedays it appears the world has gone mad. Not my first time thinking this or even saying it. Hell, almost everyone I know is saying the same thing. I’ve been watching the last couple years of f***ed up leadership in this country - watching people [...]
Do you ever hear words emanating from your lips, and instantly while the words break from your mouth you think, “Did I really just say that??” You are still in the nanosecond of surprise, when you discover you probably have a small list of sentences or phrases you could never have imagined uttering. If you [...]
I recently spent a month in South Carolina helping my mom with her recovery from knee replacement surgery. When it came time for me to return home, I had mixed feelings. I knew I couldn't stay there, eventually everyone needs to return home, but I didn’t know what I was coming home to. I wasn’t [...]
Christmas holds a special place in my heart because it was my dad’s favorite holiday, and because it’s a time of year for many family traditions and rituals to be played out. Every family has their own sacred, quirky, idiosyncratic rituals that frustrate and delight. Traditions that only need to make sense to the family [...]
My own spiritual discipline has been to challenge myself each year with an expanded understanding of the traditionalholidays, while maintaining a sense of reverence, even sentimentality to a small degree. One of the great paradoxes of navigating the landscape of religious holidays, ceremonies and traditions is dancing with reverence AND relevance at the same time. [...]
Every time a holiday, a repeat special event or ceremony comes around I sometimes think it’s cliché to talk about it - AGAIN. It seems expected, overdone, and frankly I wonder if there is anything else new to offer on the subject or any more gold to be mined. And yet here I sit with [...]
Faith is a funny thing. I can recall being seven years old, asking my mother theological questions about our faith, and her telling me with great conviction that some things we weren’t meant to know or understand. Needless to say, that answer was less than satisfying. Eventually she told me there were “man made” rules [...]
It seems as though we preachers are challenged to come up with new sermons every Sunday, and this can be especially tricky during the holidays. How many ways can we find to talk about Easter, Christmas, and Advent? I had a minister for many years who used to joke with me that he basically had [...]
