The cross, the symbol of the Christian faith, has been the subject of much theological discussion through the ages.

The mystic seeks direct experience of the divine to explore its perceptual, emotional, and metaphysical nature. For the mystic, the entire universe is conscious and alive, saturated by an all-encompassing eternal and loving Presence.

    It has been so hard to watch the events unfolding in Gaza and not fall into the ease of a hardline

You get no racism, no sexism, no homophobia, no classism…no negative stuff at all from Progressive Christians. You get positive people doing positive things.

Making a difference is a deep motivation for many of us.

So it was a great irony that some of the most homeful people in Palo Alto were the houseless.  And some of the most homeless people in Silicon Valley were the housed. 

My hope is that you are interested in changing and evolving in your life. In order to change, we need to know where we came from, what we were originally taught (in religious school or by our parents and teachers), whether it is still applicable today, and what new directions we might want to follow.

There are a few words I have had “allergies” to over the years. Words like discipline, obedience, and accountability. Some have a more intense allergic reaction than others, such as difficulty breathing, maybe getting itchy or nauseous. Of course I jest, yet they are words that have produced some measure of tension in my body because of previous life experiences.

There’s a lot of criticism about Big Pharma, Big Government, and Big Business.  And there’s been plenty of talk for decades about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. What about Big Fundy? We should name it for what it is: the fundamentalist-industrial complex.

The rise of Christian nationalism is a worldwide problem. In the United States, it begins with the idea that God chose America, that we as a nation are especially blessed.

Today, the NAACP has an LGBTQIA Committee Chairperson, Demar Roberts from S. C., who works to protect and advance the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.

The context for this article is the proposed new curriculum for the instruction of students on African American history.  Outrage over the proposal is mounting every day. 

At church inside the women’s prison last Sunday, Pastor Samm raised her hands after communion and said, receive this blessing. Immediately a roar of feedback from the mics and monitors behind her angrily filled the room.

  The bodhisattva has one pair of hands at rest. One pair of hands is praying. 500 pairs of hands are acting in

Following his life in Nazareth that possibly included day trips to Sepphoris looking for work, the next training ground for Jesus was a brief time with this same John the Baptist in the wilderness, hearing again that injustice is not the way of the Lord.

This week we celebrate beginning of summer (Wednesday). Let us remember how generous the universe is. For example, the sun. The entire energy of the earth runs on one billionth (!) of the energy the sun emits every day.

Love is, of course, an answer. And while most people of faith can agree on the command to love our neighbors, we need to face the reality of this moment. What is happening among us — the transnational struggles with democracy and attacks on human rights — is far more than a failure to love our neighbors.

You are more likely to win the lottery if you buy a ticket.

We are considering how Courage, like Joy, is one of the signs of holiness in our time.  In yesterday’s meditation, Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us that we “must love something more than the fear of death” if we are to live. 

Understanding the distinctive nature of man and woman as consciousness is quite important in defining the uniqueness of human life beyond our biology or psychology. This distinction becomes paramount when faced with critical moral issues, such as abortion, capital punishment, and euthanasia.   

  The Easter experience is about the birth of a new consciousness.  It is a consciousness that burst upon the followers of Jesus

"People will see through who's behind it. They'll see what their real agenda is, set that aside, and we can have a deeper  conversation about who Jesus was, what he was about and what we’re about as his followers today," Burklo said. 

When I look at the writers who examine the relation between religion and politics, most take their cues from the Bible. There are two problems with this approach.

We have to really think like human beings. And, just accept the reality of now.

I read once that if everyone started out with the same amount of good land and the same amount of money or what money could buy, despite the initial equality, some would become rich, and others would become poor. Why would this happen?

As International Women’s Day rolled around, that simmering sense of anger came to the surface. It flowed out, however, not in the murky waters of a pity pool, but in a torrent of stories of women all around the world and the challenges they face on a regular, often daily, basis. I set my own concerns aside and wrote for them, my own difficulties of little consequence in the face of what it is other women do every single day. In the light of their strength, our own can be renewed.

Vice President Kamala Harris has been in office since 2020. Harris struggles to carve out a lane for herself, and she feels the weight of being the first Black and Asian American to be the nation's V.P. However, with an approval rating no higher than 39 percent from multiple polls, can Harris convince the American public for a second term?

I am writing this because I have an uncommon employment history that has provided me with a very unique skill-set and perspective when it comes to making difficult and challenging hospital, hospice or nursing facility visits.

As our world faces the spectacle of Russia still harming civilians while it rampages through Ukraine, we re-visit our award-winning series, “The Power of Nonviolence”. The focus is to tell poignant stories about alternatives to military destruction and other violence, and to illustrate that there are more humane and saner ways to resolve conflict — a theme urgently needed now.

It is stories like this one that reminds me that a living Jesus — Jesus the optimistic contrarian — still walks among us in many guises; to tell and retell those human tales of how to truly live, with hope for this world.