The Adventurous Lectionary – The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost – August 18, 2019 Isaiah 5:1-7 Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19 Hebrews 11:29-12:2 Luke 12:49-56 Two weeks after El Paso and Dayton, what are we to do with this week’s readings? Can texts over two thousand years old speak to our current national waywardness? Isaiah speaks of the land being overrun by enemies due the impact of injustice, causing God to withdraw God’s protective care. Jesus speaks of division among those who disagree... Read more
“Cleansing the Doors of Perception: A Review of Michael Pollan’s ‘How to Change Your Mind’” William Blake and, later Aldous Huxley, proclaimed that if we could “cleanse the doors of perception, we would see everything as it is – infinite.” We live in a glorious, amazing, awesome, and awe-full world in which, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel averred, radical amazement is the primary spiritual response. Michael Pollan’s personal and historical journey through the renaissance of psychedelics, especially in the medical... Read more
The Adventurous Lectionary – The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost – August 11, 2019 Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:22-30 Get your spiritual GPS on track. Synchronize and calibrate your time pieces. Get your house in order and your values in line. The time is coming when values and actions, our relationship with God and neighbor, will go trump financial success, secular power, or material consumption. God invites us to be the change we want to... Read more
I child from our congregation recently noted, “To the aliens, we are aliens.” This child was speaking of extraterrestrials, but their words seemed apropos to these days of government-sanctioned race baiting and child separation. I think of myself as normal. After all, most days my life goes on effortlessly, as one of those often described as privileged, law-abiding, and socially responsible. I’m a citizen of the USA. This is my home I belong here. No one looks at me as... Read more
Can you be both a mystic and a social activist? Can you hold a progressive, activist, theology, and be a contemplative? Can you be both heavenly minded and earthly good? The way of Jesus and his mystic followers transcends the polarities of activism and contemplation, inner journey and outer activity. Jesus’ path is both personal and social. Jesus’ embodied a prophetic spirituality reflected in his welcome of the marginalized, affirmation of women, expansion of the scope of salvation and ethical... Read more
The Adventurous Lectionary – The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost – August 4, 2019 Hosea 11:1-11 Psalm 107:1-9, 43 Colossians 3:1-11 Luke 12:13-21 Is God apathetic or passionate? Is God beyond concern for this world and its waywardness or does God have skin in the game? Does God view our human joys and sorrow as an observer, “from a distance,” or is God the “fellow sufferer who understands?” Abraham Joshua Heschel asserts that the prophet’s passion is energized by her or... Read more
Several times this week, I’ve seen Facebook posts or shared articles asserting that God chose Donald Trump as our president and implying that challenging Trump either on policy or character goes against God’s plan for the USA. In 2000 and 2004, I saw similar articles describing the divine anointing of George W. Bush as the USA president and asserting that opposition to “W” would be opposition to God. I’ve seen this mantra recited from conservative Christian leaders as well. Ironically,... Read more
In the wake of the political firestorm involving a presidential suggestion that four outspoken congresswomen – all citizens and three of which were born in the USA -should return to their nations of origin, the pastor of the ironically-named Friendship Baptist Church in Appomattox, Virginia, placed the following message on the church marque, “America: Love It or Leave It.” When queried about the sign, the pastor responded, “People feel hard about our president and want to down the president and... Read more
Theology can cure or kill. Theology can promote compassion and self-transcendence and bigotry and selfishness. When theology is connected too intimately with politics, these polarities emerge in ways that can lead to tolerance and affirmation or persecution and judgment of those who differ from us. In these times in which religion has, in some quarters, become aligned with the idolatrous practices of nation-first, bullying of those who do not hold our viewpoints, and reliance on falsehoods rather than the quest... Read more
There’s a joke that says “if you remember the sixties, you weren’t really there.” I am a child of the sixties. I remember a teenager, rail thin, long-haired, scruffy, growing my first beard, a pilgrim on a magical mystery tour with Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, Siddhartha, and Steppenwolf as my companions and the Sermon on the Mount, Thoreau, Whitman, Lao Tzu, and the Upanishads as my guides. I remember soaring eight miles high with the Byrds, tripping with the Chamber’s brothers... Read more
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