A five-part fictional story set in the early 1990s about Reverend Paul Graham and his congregation, Grace United Church of Christ.

A five-part fictional story set in the early 1990s about Reverend Paul Graham and his congregation, Grace United Church of Christ.

A five-part fictional story set in the early 1990s about Reverend Paul Graham and his congregation, Grace United Church of Christ.

A five-part fictional story set in the early 1990s about Reverend Paul Graham and his congregation, Grace United Church of Christ.

A five-part fictional story set in the early 1990s about Reverend Paul Graham and his congregation, Grace United Church of Christ.

Earth's hot blood rises, bursts, and pours, Scabs rough black across the plains, Sinks, boils again, and rises slow; Cools, congeals, as crystals grow;

Like many others, the Thanksgiving holiday is another reason I love the autumn season. The occasion gives us the allocation of a few fleeting moments to pause and express appreciation for whatever we have, but only for the time being. In a world either terrorized or abused by those who have little regard for it, it has become downright dangerous and nearly complicit, to encourage the illusory notion of any sweet by-and-by; expecially for those who can’t seem to wait for it. If there is to be any knockin’ on heaven’s door, the place is always here, and the time is always now. Since none of us can imagine with any certainty whatsoever that unknown reality from whence we have all come, all we can really know is what is. And, considering all those most authentic, very earthy and non-religious parables Jesus used to try to describe a “reign of God” – or, if you prefer, “kingdom of heaven” – they all seemed to be very much of this earth, and the stuff of daily life. I do not believe in any afterlife of my own. And I’m done with any notion of a heaven that is anywhere else than on the face of this earth; with whatever we make of it, and for the time being. The poet, Robert Browning, once wrote, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” The painfully obvious fact that we have so utterly failed to grasp such a paradise, does not yet mean we should hold back our reach of it.

I was shopping for a college to attend and my school counselor gave my name and address to Immaculate Heart College. Just old enough to realize my heart was not immaculate? How could this be the right college for a young leftish wannabe political activist Who spoke no Catholic?

It's simply a magnetic pointer that swivels on a pivot Northerly it leads us and there's confidence we give it Called a "compass"

"God," our creator -- it's really just a human-given name Humbly self-described in the book of Genesis as "I am" The source of

In most conservative Christian circles, the importance of belief is talked about "You've got to see God like we see Him -- for salvation, you can't do without!"

Several years ago Lesley attended a small church in the suburbs. Every year toward the end of Advent the members of this church

The Conscious Aging Alliance is comprised of several organizations that are making a positive contribution to a new vision of aging

Into that fraught landscape came the news earlier this week that Karen L. King, a Harvard Divinity School church historian and expert on the controversial biblical figure, Mary Magdalene, had been given access to a papyrus fragment held by a private collector.

Biblical scholarship is an academic discipline, taught and studied at universities, colleges and divinity schools all around the world. So it should be no surprise that biblical scholars run in all shapes, sizes, colors and denominations. What would surprise many people, though, is that a very large number of us love Jesus and the church, and we spend hours upon hours communicating the love and wonder we experience with the Bible.

When I want to get under the surface of things, I re-read the “proverbios” of the early 20th c. Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, and those of the later 20th c. Argentine poet, Antonio Porchia. Both men lived simply, loved deeply, and are cherished still as poets in their respective homelands.

Students of the history and legacy of the West’s Protestant Reformation over its past millennium or thousand-year period can in contrast observe that “RiP” can have another connotation, which implies and express a less peaceful changing of attitudes and chain of events. What emerges is not a single “Reformation” but at least five “Re-formations” or modifications and amendments of attitudes, belief-systems and doctrinal confessions.

You are a jar of water. The Christ is turning you into wine right now. You don’t know how. I don’t know how. I daresay Jesus didn’t know how either. Stuff is going on in that jar of yours that nobody can explain.

I believe that progressive Christians need to reclaim and redefine the healings of Jesus as part of their embrace of today’s growing movements in global and complementary medicine. Healing can be understood as natural, rather than supernatural, and can involve the transformation of energy in the dynamic interdependence of mind-body-spirit rather than the violation of predictable causal relationships.

Anybody who sets himself the task of acquitting God from the charge of being a “moral monster” has his work cut out for him. Paul Copan knows this, but in his attempt to acquit God he seems to be standing at the bottom of a pit wielding a shovel. How do you get out of a hole withthat tool?

I still remember the existential gut wrenching I felt when I first read John Dominic Crossan’s assertion that underneath the resurrection story that cracks like holy thunder on Easter morning was the more likely scenario that the crucified body of Jesus was probably consumed by wild dogs.

...while they no longer accept such teachings as the virgin birth, nor the miracle stories, some still consider Jesus to have been divine, and most, if not all, consider him a model of the most perfectly spiritually developed human on the planet, the perfect example of the love of God on earth.

Rev. Jim Burklo is the Associate Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California. An ordained United Church of Christ pastor, he is the author of books on progressive Christianity: OPEN CHRISTIANITY: Home by Another Road and BIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS: Meditations, Prayers, and Songs for Progressive Christians. His latest book, HITCH-HIKING TO ALASKA: The Way of Soulful Service, will be published late in 2012. You can read his weekly blog, “Musings”, at www.tcpc.blogs.com/musings , and his personal website is www.jimburklo.com .

It was Jesus of Nazareth, not of Nashville, or New York, or...

Every Holy Week for many years I have travelled to The Temple of God’s Wounds, a small book written in 1951 by the Anglican Bishop of Bombay, ‘Will Quinlan’ nee William Quinlan Lash, a mystic.

Paul is not talking about life after death. Paul is talking about embracing the challenge of distributive justice-compassion –“the great work” – here and now. John’s Jesus assures us that “the spirit of truth will testify on my behalf,” not about the insane claim that he was God, nor about the resuscitation of a corpse.

Bonhoeffer treasured Cervantes' Don Quixote.  He believed the beleaguered idealist was an apt metaphor for the Confessing Church.

More than being a “human being” on this earth, John’s gospel calls for a transformed life: water into wine; a temple made of distributive justice-compassion, not gold and stone.

A fictional story about an error in Jewish theology that contributed to the questionable right of Christianity to exist.

It has long been a family tradition to mark the days of Advent and Christmastide seasons with the wood-carved characters appearing in our little crèche one by one, week after week, like unfolding scenes in a two-act drama. But the year one of the three wise men was nowhere to be found when it came for him to enter stage left not only got me wondering about his whereabouts, but what he could have possibly been up to.  Such speculation, I would suggest, may be no less credible than Matthew’s fanciful, retrospective tale.