When the intellectual history of the 20th century is written, a few achievements will tower overall. Einstein’s theory of general relativity will be one; the laws of quantum mechanics will be another. The Big Bang Theory of the origin of the universe will be a third.

I pray, and look to scripture, and consider our role as people on an ever-changing planet as residents in and stewards of creation.

Saint Paul is often regarded as a particularly troublesome writer for those who try to reconcile animal liberation and Christianity.

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

Global warming is the latest proof that we have crossed a boundary into a truly apocalyptic age, for we now live in a period when anthropogenic change is overpowering nature and life itself.

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.

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. 

Earlier this week, I read that Spain has ruled cigarette manufacturers responsible for the cost of cigarette butt clean-up. I was SOOOOO excited about that; completely over the top!

The Food Tank is INCREDIBLY excited to share with you that the Food Donation Improvement Act passed both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and is now heading to President Biden’s desk for final approval! It is a major bipartisan accomplishment.

Here are some recent news items to which I have added a few facts that seem related. Have fun putting it all together, creating your own narrative about what it all might mean, if anything. 

Santa must evolve. He has to become more meaningful, more relevant, more present. Santa’s way of being in the world, as the children’s greatest gift-giver, needs bringing up to speed. What we need is a Santa children will want to emulate, and who can help them learn to serve the Earth as a long-term thank you for the miracle of life.

What does a Modern Christianity look like to you? Will you help build it?

Revisioning ancient faith for the modern world is not an easy task. No simple answers exist. The process will be long, complicated, conflicted, and uncertain.

Let us celebrate this wondrous thing called love.  The kind of love Jesus was talking about in his Sermon on the Mount was agape – unconditional love. 

We live in a world characterised as 'fragmented'. It isn't fragmented. It's diverse. If we ecologically pattern our thinking, we reframe it, and that applies to science and scientific thinking too.

We are all part of this wonderful Cosmos, always have been and always will be.   This unknowable life-force-energy mystery, which I am comfortable calling ‘God’, has been, is, and always will be the active creative force in this changing, expanding and evolving wonderful Cosmos.  And in ME!!!

Who ever thought we would say this, but it seems to be the case that society could be collapsing before our very eyes. The common bond that forges a basis for unity is disintegrating, indicated and exemplified by the litany of headlines that continue to bombard us.

While it may look like there are individual trees in the above picture, quaking aspens grow in colonies of tens of thousands of trees, or stems, which are all connected by a single root system.

The Christian cross, taken as a modern working symbol, can also find a new role, a complementary one to its original deep association with the crucifixion. One that speaks a common language in cross-religious or interfaith contexts.

Many of us wrestle with fear, despair, insecurity, and loneliness in this time of sustained global crisis. I worry for the future of the human family and life itself. But these times are also an invitation.

We have a dark wicked side. It controls many of our thoughts and actions. It ensnares the smart and the dumb, the privileged and the non privileged, the healthy and the sick. In today’s world it undermines many of our economic, social, political, philosophical and religious structures.

It is not something new to begin with cosmology—Genesis One does that.

Religious communities have a rich opportunity to contribute to a global goal of restoring forest ecosystems as part of the current UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

In mystical activism, we live more and more in the divine flow of here and now, and experience the sacred world in everything we do – raising our children, loving our family and our friends, performing our work, being kind and considerate, caring for community and environment, pursuing climate activism, and even in the simplest human acts of eating and drinking and loving – they are all sacred in awakened consciousness.

Profound shifts in consciousness are driving the accumulated crises of the world. I believe the timeless and universal vision of this work is critical to our survival. 

I see a great opportunity for ProgressiveChristianity.org to move in a new direction. I must admit to making this recommendation in fear and trembling because I know nothing about the internal operation of an organization I dearly love.

Sugar Maples remind us to tap into our core in transitional seasons when life itself sometimes hangs in the balance, tossed to-and-fro between the fluctuating extremes of faith and doubt, sickness and health, or fear and courage. Crises tend to dim and blind our exterior self as we awaken to and free fall toward our inner self, and with it the few things that matter.

Most of us have gone quietly on saying how terrible it is and doing nothing. We (I) am all too comfortable in our (my) innocence and ignorance of the grim reality of the life of those oppressed. But the move is on. The age of innocence is over.

Can prayers be narcissistic? A great many prayers are in the first person, like the laments in the Psalms. “God help me, rescue me, forgive me, heal me” are typical petitions in the first person. But praying for oneself can become narcissism when concern for oneself supersedes loving our neighbors. 

You can “walk” these stations by practicing one station per day, from March 20 through Good Friday, April 2 – or at any other time or manner during Lent (Ash Wednesday, February 17, until Easter Sunday, April 4).