I had no idea, over 30 years ago, what I was getting into when I accepted an invitation by a good friend to attend something called an Enlightenment Intensive. At the time I was getting ready to move with my wife and three-year old daughter to Berkeley, California to attend Pacific School of Religion. Admittedly I was put off a bit by the rather pretentious title of the retreat. However, I decided if my wise friend thought it might be a good experience for me, it was good enough for me. It turned out to be a life changing experience.

Your vision doesn’t have to be pretty, and it doesn’t have to conform to other peoples’ expectations. It just has to be clear. What if your vision is lost in a blizzard like mind fog? It’s sometimes hard to see past the demands of the moment to imagine life in the future.

We are one with the creatures,
One with the plants,
One with the life of Earth.

The purpose of this book is to try and present a series of images that will allow us to understand how it is indeed possible for an invisible being, God, to be part of our material reality, …

I’m attending a conference at Esalen Institute near Big Sur this week. It’s hosted by Esalen’s Center for Theory and Research. It’s focused on peacemaking among the Abrahamic faiths. After the first day of the meeting, I …

O God, Infinite and everlasting!
By what name shall we call you? Being human, we have only human words to use.

Each individual
is like an angel
with only one wing

Divine Wisdom, we come seeking your guidance in our efforts to work together for peace. We come from diverse ethnic groups, cultures, and religions. We believe these differences enrich us all. Lead us on your paths to lasting and true peace.

Dear God, bless my taxes! Give me peace of mind as I struggle to fill out the forms and determine the right amounts I should be sending to Washington and Sacramento. Keep me calm, I pray, as I write out those fat checks on April 15. And whisper a reminder to me, Lord, of all the good reasons that I send my money to my government every year.

The Blessing of the Taxes is a “faith based initiative” to reclaim the positive value of taxes and the vital public services they fund… as a matter of faithful conviction. Celebrations of this “blessing” will occur around the country on the week before April 15.

The problem with being an atheist
is the lack
of imagination.

When Man from Eden new-cast out then tore at Earth and ripped
Her coal and iron, her oil and gold, his melancholy tipped
The world toward devastated blight, toward envy, hatred, wars.
They turned sweet hills to desert wastes and pocked the Earth with sores.

All: We are all partners and stewards of the unfolding universe, which is God’s glorious creation. Together we make the following shared commitment:

I lift up my eyes to Diablo
looming over the bay, a diadem of gold and green
spreading its dun folds down to its urban skirts

This light which bathes the world,
pours from a source so close, so near
and yet we cannot touch it
or fence it in that it not be lost.

If Jesus died for anything, he laid down his life like most social prophets and martyrs as a complete and utter refutation and relinquishment of any vestiges of earthly kingdoms. Whatever the subsequent followers of the donkey king would retrospectively make of him, he was regarded by the powers that be as nothing more than a nuisance. As more than one biblical scholar has pointed out, the real significance of Jesus’ crucifixion lay in the fact that anyone subsequently noticed and cared about the execution of a nobody. Yet it is the way of a nobody — not a somebody — that has so often altered the way of an otherwise weary world.

“Why look for the living among the dead?” [Luke 24:5] “We live in a post-resurrection age, which in many ways is not unlike that of the first followers of a Galilean peasant sage and martyr, who was …

She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.