“At the center of the Christmas story is hope…hope which comes to us in the form of a vulnerable, poor baby. A child, not a king, changes the world. God appears to us as a marginalized, Afro-Semitic, Jewish child from Nazareth in Palestine. A child who grows up to teach us to welcome the stranger. How would our world be different if we loved our neighbors as ourselves?” asks the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, senior minister of Middle Collegiate Church.

Lo Divino nos está llamando
The Divine is calling us
para liberar a los cautivos,
to bring release to the captives,

These liturgical prayers feed my heart and my spirit. Grounded in the theology of baptism, and rooted in the ancient Christian and the Anglican-Episcopal traditions, Forrester’s liturgical texts will appeal to the weary pilgrim and the faithful church-goer, as well as all those seeking a deeper experience of the Beloved.

“Those now last will be first, and those now first will be last.”

Let me just be honest and say that this was hard for me to read, if not a bit repugnant as it goes against everything I have come to understand about Jesus as an open and inclusive teacher who frequently transgressed conventional norms that were exclusionary.

To the Hawaiians, Aloha means “God in us.”

For thousands of years fanatical religious leaders have been trying to make people accept complicated and irrational systems of belief. Each group has different requirements and rituals. Each group claims their demands come straight from the mouth of their god. Each group uses threats and rewards to ensure obedience.

Religious Naturalism (RN) has two central aspects. One is a naturalist view of how things happen in the world—in which the natural world is all there is, and that nothing other than natural may cause events in the world. From nature we came, in nature we are, to nature we go… The other is appreciation of religion with a view that nature can be a focus of religious attention – the ‘cosmic religious feeling’ as Einstein called it.

Reminding us symbolically of this union of body and spirit, Jesus took a loaf of bread, broke it like we are often broken in our relationships with one another, and showed us the way to reconciliation by asking us to share our bread with one another in remembrance of his own example.

Remember that resurrection is more than mere resuscitation! It is life transformed!
It is faith in possibilities, when others are convinced of inevitability.

O God of empty tombs and resurrection living:
Make us mindful of the pervasiveness of hope, 
the determination of faith, 
and the persistence of love.  

Our work of peace must begin with the private world of each one of us. To build for man a world without fear, we must be without fear. To build a world of justice we must be just. And how can we fight for liberty if we are not free in our own minds? Dag Hammarskjold

  PENTECOST Here’s a call to worship, rooted in the Christian past, but open to the global voices, and celebrating an Earth-based liturgy. Three voices scattered in the worship space, perhaps one at the Table, another at …

Like the falling of the leaves security in life lies in the process not in the fixed points.
Without harvest there can be no seed time.
Without death there can be no new life, no new beginning.

1. The fragrance of Spring lies not in judgement’s intervention but in love’s nurturing of the interior goodness.
2. Spring is not so much a moment as a movement, a manifestation of the sometimes hidden but always present life-force of God.

The flowering of summer is only eclipsed by the flowering of the human spirit.
Flowering has no permanency – only the process remains. Indeed the flowering only exists for the continuation of the process.

Our Good is born in purity
As we awaken, each short day
This Good survives through struggles,
Tackles fears
Faces tests
Within the loud affray

Spirit of mercy

Be my guide

Shalom

Source of Good;
grant me the serenity
to accept
that I cannot change other people;