Between Stuart and me I like to hold myself out as the more sophisticated. Anyone who knows us both well knows that the truth is far from this. Stuart possesses the enviable capacity to embrace his family and their stories. I’m still trying to figure out mine and theirs. Some...
Last weekend, I was in Albuquerque for the 6th Conspire Conference, with the Center for Action and Contemplation. Over a thousand folks gathered from all over the world to learn from Barbara Holmes, Richard Rohr, Brian McLaren, Mirabai Starr, and our own Barbara Brown Taylor. It was an extraordinary time and...
“But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children.” Today’s readings are rich with a particular...
When I was a little kid in Arkansas, back at Egypt Missionary Baptist Church, our little church had a tradition—one that I wonder would be meaningful here. The first Sunday...
The angel of the Lord came a second time to Elijah, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” I want to return this morning to an image or theme that I raised a few weeks ago, the invitation we have...
There is another Grace Church in my life, as dear to me in many ways as this Grace is. She’s a little younger, built in 1891, a Carpenter Gothic very tiny building nestled in the center of 27 acres, 12 of which are carefully landscaped, with brick pathways that wind...
While finishing the latest edit on my chapter for the upcoming book, I went back to the one book that launched my entire exploration of contemplative prayer. Some 16 years ago, when I arrived at Columbia Seminary, I bought a book by Richard Foster: Celebration of Discipline. At that time, I dug...
Previously on Sermons: We have explored a core quality of our existence, with the realization that, in God’s vision for life, there is no “other,” that all is held and connected within God’s embrace. We have explored that it is our own sinful grasping onto illusory separateness that causes our...
Previously on Sermons: last week, we looked at the dynamic of encountering “the other,” and how, through the person of Jesus and his encounter with the ostracized, bleeding woman, we see that, in God’s own vision, there is, essentially, no “other.” We are all connected through the Spirit of Christ...
Thank you for returning for the next installment in the series of family systems sermons, based on the Royal family of Israel. Last week we talked about the almost inexplicable phenomenon of thinking about someone every day when for one or another reason we know it is unlikely we will ever see...