DON’T MEAN TO BUM YOU OUT ON A “GOOD” FRIDAY ~ but I want you to know how comforting and inspiring it is for me to know that those who live and die seeking justice, equity, forgiveness and love for all are not alone in their quest. You can kill the messenger, but you cannot kill the message. In this age when so few go to “church” and scoff at iconic and ancient symbols of religion, to the point where... Read more

Today is Tax Day and the IRS wants our money. Many of us would “give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s” (Luke 20:25) if we only had it to give. Maybe we can spin straw into gold like what happens in the tale of Rumplestiltskin. Do you remember? The king shuts a young woman in a tower with a pile of straw and demands she transform it into gold, which she does with the help of a creepy creature named... Read more

Few people care to take a snapshot of what they really look like. If you take a dozen selfies, eleven will be deleted because they don’t reflect what we want others to see. That makes sense. But there comes a time in every faith tradition and spiritual pursuit when taking an honest appraisal of our own self is mandated or encouraged. In the Jewish faith tradition it is called Yom Kippur. In the Christian faith tradition it is called Lent.... Read more

Someone would have to be be out of their mind to claim they have been “blessed” with addiction. Would they also feel blessed by a hurricane that destroyed everything in its path: property, home, relationships, health, hope? And yet, I have seen, through word and deed, countless people who believe they are blessed with addiction; and their experience, strength and hope can be a blessing to others. Let’s unpack this oxymoronic phrase: blessed with addiction. Many people only encounter the... Read more

“Having a Spiritual Awakening” and “A Quest for Wholeness” were the two traits of similarity between 12 Step programs and the church and other spiritual fellowships that I mentioned in the two previous entries of this series. Today I add “Hitting Bottom.” It seems universal that spiritual awakenings and the quest for wholeness frequently grow out of brokenness. The Apostle Paul and Bill W. (a co-founder of AA) ~ like many of us ~ struggle to make sense out of... Read more

PASTOR OF HISTORIC LONG ISLAND CHURCH CALLS FOR FURLOUGHED WORKERS STRIKE ON VALENTINES DAY With Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on my mind, and inspired, in part, by President Trump’s grounding of a military plane in retaliation for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s grounding of the President’s State of the Union speech in the House of Representatives ~ it is time for the grownups of our country ~ the American people ~ to end the government shutdown by grounding the... Read more

There are many things that the Apostle Paul and Bill Wilson have in common. And there are many things that AA and the church have in common as well. In this year-long series, I will look at several of them. In the previous two posts, we looked at the “spiritual awakening” of Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. In the following post we looked at the apostle Paul. Today we look at a quest for wholeness. In the 1930’s, the... Read more

There are many things that the Apostle Paul and Bill Wilson ~ AA and the church ~ have in common. We will look at eight of them. In the previous post, we looked at the “spiritual awakening” of Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. This week we look at the “spiritual awakening” of the apostle Paul: 1. A SPIRITUAL AWAKENING (part two) The Apostle Paul The man we call Paul was originally named Saul and was a devout Jew who... Read more