Lent involves becoming aware of the detritus – whether we call it sin, imperfection, ambiguity, lack of commitment, dis-ease, guilt, and shame – that stands in the way of celebrating divine abundance in ourselves and the world. Read more
Lent involves becoming aware of the detritus – whether we call it sin, imperfection, ambiguity, lack of commitment, dis-ease, guilt, and shame – that stands in the way of celebrating divine abundance in ourselves and the world. Read more
Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 When I reflected this week on Jesus’ parable of the lost son (popularly known as the prodigal son), my mind wandered to Bob Dylan’s classic “Like a Rolling Stone,” the story of a young woman’s fall from a life of ease to a hardscrabble life on the streets, perhaps, due to addiction, “on your own with no direction home.” As a sixties child of the San Francisco Bay Area, I recall many of... Read more
Contrary to public opinion both among critics and many Christians, Christian faith is intended to be imaginative rather than restrictive. Some people obviously believe some version of the following, “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it.” But, such understanding of scripture and the Christian life makes the words of scriptures dead letters; the end of discussion rather than the beginning of a holy adventure. Faith is a way of experiencing reality. As Alistair McGrath says, in... Read more
God is graceful, but should we watch our step around God? Can grace and fury both characterize God’s experience? Read more
One of my spiritual teachers, Gerald May, describes the spiritual journey in terms of taking time to pause, notice, open, yield and stretch, and respond. This is good Lenten advice. Lent is about mindfulness and opening to our current reality in all its fullness. A few wise colleagues responded to last week’s Lenten question – “Practicing a Progressive Lent: Simplicity and Celebration” – with the concern that repentance is essential to experiencing grace and that Ash Wednesday provides an opportunity... Read more
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35 The Quakers have a saying “a way will be made.” A variation of this is the affirmation that “God makes a way where there is no way.” Out of apparent scarcity, abundance emerges. Where there appears to be a dead end, a path appears. When we hit bottom, we discover God is with us and we can, with God’s companionship and inspiration, climb out of the mess in which we’ve found ourselves. When think... Read more
Moore and Yim did the remarkable: they heard about slavery and sex trafficking and chose to respond. They recognized that what appeared to be their powerlessness was in fact the seed bed of transformation. Read more
What are our temptations? What will keep us from following God’s vision for our lives? What good things do we need to defer to achieve greater things? Read more
I don’t go in very much for penitence. I don’t focus much on sin; its reality is much too obvious and frankly most people emphasize small lapses, too often feeling guilty about small peccadillos, rather than concentrating on the social evils that daily destroy families, lead to violence in schools, and contribute to planetary climate change. I’ve never felt the need to “give up something for Lent.” Instead, I see Lent as a time for joyful simplicity that opens the... Read more
Can we remember Ash Wednesday without guilt? Can Lent be an embodied, rather than ascetic season? Read more
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