Two hundred spiritual activists had traveled to Italy in order to broaden and energize their passion for peace and justice through interreligious and spiritually engaged conversations. I realized how much I also was treasuring these informal personal exchanges within the larger context of the conference.

“Higher Ground” is a song that speaks of the perseverance it takes to reach the higher consciousness. Let’s all keep trying together, one heart and one song at a time, until we all reach the Higher Ground.

With my heart pounding away, I was asking, “And why am I here?”

That bedrock of Jesus’ teaching did however have implications as to how we might order our lives in society; in closer alignment with what those scriptures depict as something more akin to what the divine had in mind. As well as how we ought to treat one another, without vacuous pretence or self-embellishment.

At Religion Dispatches, Peter Laarman writes a heartfelt open letter, ordained pastor to ordained pastor, to Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, the “Hispanic Karl Rove,” as Greg Metzger characterizes him.

Great Spirit, Source of Love and Life,
Help us bring an end to strife;
Fill all our hearts with peace and grace,
May we enhance the human race.

The common dream most people have of one day having more than they already have seems to have remained as fleeting and elusive as ever. Meanwhile, the gross disparity and widening gap in this country between the haves and the have-nots has reached a point where an oligarchy of corporate interests posing as individuals shape public opinion and outspend each other as never before in partisan attempts to buy an election.

Simone Weil was a Jewish philosopher from France who was hungry for God, and found God through Christianity – even though she never became a Christian…For her, being hungry for God was the way to have God. Yearning for God was her experience of God.

TJ Dawe speaks about the goals of his organization, Beams and Struts, and an ideology of compassionate cooperation.

Why would a Jewish American doctor risk serving the medical needs of Palestinian children in the occupied territories of the West Bank?

Sermon by Rev. Rich Lang with University Temple United Methodist Church in Seattle on “Marriage Equality As Christian Sacrament” rooted in Matthew 16: 5-19 recorded October 14, 2012.

Yes, I’m a progressive Christian, but I’m not a Democrat. I happen to be registered as an Independent/Unaffiliated, and I’ve met quite a few people who are fellow progressive Christians but who are registered Republicans and/or are conservative politically. Just because someone’s equally okay with referring to God as “She,” “Father,” “Mother,” “Om,” “the Ground of All Being,” or “Allah” — or just because they believe that there’s no need to convert their Buddhist neighbors — doesn’t mean that they’ll be voting for Obama in November.