When they sang together, you could hear the harmony that should define this country’s relationships across race.

I’ve always assumed that the grief Mary Magdalen expresses at Jesus’ tomb had a particularity to it. We know that he had cast seven demons out of her and that she supported his ministry out of her own purse. I do not know what it is like to be a woman 2,000 years ago who was the village demoniac, but I cannot imagine it was a pleasure.

Lawyer and historian Cameron Thorne found an ancient Templar scroll that referred to Jesus as “The Thief on the Cross.” He and his fiancée, Amanda Spencer, try to uncover several secrets of early Christianity before a splinter group of Mormon zealots finds them and destroys them.

In David S. Brody’s novel, Cabal of the Westford Knight (2009), a Canadian Catholic priest explains to lawyer/historian Cameron Thorne and Amanda Spencer, a British researcher, several unorthodox beliefs.

The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury (2005) opens in Acre, Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, in 1291. As the city burns, a Templar knight, Martin of Carmaux, and his mentor, Aimard of Villiers, board a galley with a mysterious Templar chest. The ship vanishes without a trace.

In Kathleen McGowan’s The Book of Love (2008), Maureen Pascal, a journalist, needs assistance from the man she loves, Berenger Sinclair, and her cousin, a Jesuit scholar at the Vatican, to unravel Matilda of Tuscany’s biography and to find The Book of Love, a gospel written by Jesus, before a secret faction within the Catholic Church destroys it. The Church is afraid the revelations in these documents will inflict irreparable damage on the Church and its doctrines, so they will do whatever is necessary to make certain Maureen and her friends fail in their mission.

In The Alexandria Link (2007) by Steve Berry, Cotton Malone, a retired elite operative for the U.S. Justice Department, has become a Copenhagen rare-book dealer. He intends to lead a more stress-free life, but his son is kidnapped. The kidnappers force him to try to find the lost Library of Alexandria, which vanished approximately fifteen hundred years ago.

Do Christians – the more fundamental or conservative ones, at least – read anything other than the Bible? If they’re reading contemporary fiction or seeing movies like The Da Vinci Code, they are not screaming heresy as loudly as would one might expect. Eighty million copies of The Da Vinci Code were sold worldwide and millions more saw the film version even though author Dan Brown makes many claims that are unorthodox.

It’s amazing to me how theologically progressive modern novelists are and yet they are being read by millions, who don’t appear to be disturbed by unorthodox ideas about Christianity that are in these novels.

Shymaa, a little 4 yr old girl who laid in a comma in a GAZA hospital, during the summer of 2014. She would recover to find her entire family was murdered during an Israeli bombing. Her story sparked the 2 Unite All benefit album with 30 world famed musicians like Peter Gabriel, Roger Waters, Stewart Copeland, Philip Lawrence (Bruno Mars) and the Love All Love Wins / UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) movement.

GPSA Founder Steve Robertson stated, "We've had so many amazing music and video submittals. What an honor its been to be exposed to such music and videos and then be able to share this music with our world. Therefore, it is with great pleasure that we announce the 2017 GPSA WINNERS

“Men on Boats” is more than just a belly of laughs about ten men in four boats surveying an uncharted canyon. “Men on Boats” is an eye-opening and provocative comedy/drama about the polemics of white cisgender male power and privilege to conquer the wilderness girded by their unflinching God-given belief in the 19th-century doctrine of Manifest Destiny to do so. Also, these men had the power and privilege to write America’s history of exploring westward to spread “democracy" by conquering anything and anyone in their way.

Receiving the award is a historic moment not only for True Colors, but also for the White House in recognizing and honoring the artistic talents of America’s LGBTQ youth, especially youth of color.

Against or Through? With or For? But or And? Skits for worship

Similarly, if we allow the menacing influence of certain TV and/or movie content to go unchecked and corporations from whom we buy products to sponsors such debasement without pushback, then the boil of apathy and moral confusion will likely lead us to experience and repeat the history of the fallen Roman Empire. According to Lewis Munford (1895-1990), American renowned historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology and influential literary critic: “Rome fell not because of political or economic ineptitude, not even because of barbarian invasions; Rome collapsed through a leaching away of meaning and a loss of faith. Rome fell because of a barbarization from within.”

Despite the exaggerated details in this legend, the essence of truth remains: One of the greatest violin players alive today, played some of the best music ever written, on one of the best violins in the world, and most of the people who where there that day never even noticed. When I read the stories about the Baptism of Jesus, I get the impression that something similar has happened to this myth.

What wisdom I have Awakens me to my blindness. I cannot see light itself: What I know of light Is only an alluring shadow Of what it is and does.

What is on your Christmas list this year? What are you getting for friends and family? Check out this great resource compiled by Katie at Wellness Mama of natural and organic gifts!

A transformational festival is more than a music festival, more than a group campout, and more than a social gathering, although it has many of the same components. What exactly distinguishes a transformational festival like Lucidity from a more mainstream festival like Coachella? It is the emphasis on transformation – both of the self, through rapid personal growth and self-realization, and of society, through a focus on sustainable living, community, education, and wellness. These are usually three to seven day events defined as “counterculture festivals that espouse a community-building ethic and a value system that celebrates life, personal growth, social responsibility, healthy living, and creative expression.”1

The way you tell the Christmas story, it all sounds so simple. So simple. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I really like it. It’s just that for so long now people have been telling my story and the way they tell it, it all sounds so simple and easy, so neat and tidy, that I hardly recognize myself in the story. It’s not your fault.  It all started a long time ago. Luke and that other fellow Matthew, they started it all.  They wrote my story down and wouldn’t you know it they cleaned it all up. But who can blame them.  Nobody likes messy birth stories. And as birth stories go, my baby’s birth was a really messy one.

As Christmas draws near, we turn to stories to express the inexpressible. Like the Gospel writers we are at a loss to explain the activity of our God in the world and so we too resort to story telling. Families gather and the reliable old stories are told. And each year new stories are added to our treasure troves as we seek to express the inexpressible and touch the hem of our God who is love. And what better way to touch and be touched by God than to tell stories of God’s love in the world. We all have treasure troves of stories of Christ taking on flesh and dwelling among us. My story took place when I was a young woman determined that my first Christmas living out in the world would be the type of Christmas that dreams are made of.

Distributive justice-compassion, or “restorative” justice, argues that the rain falls on the just and the unjust, and that while the back-story may be compelling or repelling, violence is never the solution. When society’s protective systems “codify right from wrong, separating the holy from the profane,” who will call attention to the injustice that gets embedded in those very codes whose purpose is to protect and defend the safety and security of that society?

The lyrics of the hymns and praise and worship songs of the church are, outside of the Bible, the way most people establish their belief system, which is reflected in the way they think about and live their faith. The lyrics may be good or bad, perceptive or trite, and may or may not teach sound theological concepts. Christians should carefully consider what they are singing because it shapes their theological perspective whether they realize it or not.

“Without music, life would be a mistake.” So wrote the famed philosopher, Nietzsche. I believe that music in sacred community is the medium which allows us to feel and to express our deepest emotions: joy, lament, awe and thanksgiving. Music in sacred community binds us together. Studies have shown that groups who make music together feel a certain kinship with each other, and leave that time of singing or drumming, playing instruments, etc. with their endorphins dancing, and their bodies humming with better health and vibrations. Surely when all of this is enhanced by words of hymns or songs, we can know that we have participated in a rich experience which has fed our souls.

Such a captivating experience is not limited by the type or setting of the music. Classical, pop, bluegrass, jazz, country, blues, to name common Western music, all have the capacity to release an energy within us, previously pent up, but now free. That release can and does happen to anyone, any time, any place. Music is one of the great equalizers of persons. No matter who you are, you are susceptible to this unfathomed power. What is going on here?

St. Augustine said that the one who sings, prays twice. We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words; we get closest to praying as we ought when we sing. But church singing has changed rapidly in the 30-some years I’ve been a pastor. The hip new hymnal that came out in the nineties contains far too many hymns that were written for an organ and a congregation in the hundreds, not a guitar, a piano, and a raggedy chorus of twenty-some.

Our hymnals are full of great hymns. Great because the melodies and harmonies have survived, in some cases for centuries. Great because the lyrics, whether in their original language, or translated, or adapted, can often read as timeless poetry, lending themselves to effortless memorization.

The varieties of religious experience call forth hymns and songs, emerging from the varieties of cultures, personality types, and religious expressions. Our worship and song reflects this diversity. We join in sacred worship traditional and contemporary, North American and African, and European and Asian. We chant hymns from Taize and melodies from Iona, and dance to “Siyahamba” (We are marching in the light of God), sometimes in the same service.

The "sixth sense" in popular culture is a reference to paranormal powers of perception. But I sense it's something deeper than clairvoyance. It's not some kind of superpower. It is our ability and propensity to have a relationship with the underlying essence of all reality. There's a subtle way in which we can know what we cannot know, touch what we cannot touch.

My first experience of the art form methodology was as a participant in the Parish Leadership Colloquy. It was a course designed for clergy by the Ecumenical Institute of Chicago. We gathered for lunch on the second day of the four day event. At the end of each meal the leadership always led us in a conversation. The focus for this conversation was a print of a famous painting by Pablo Picasso—Guernica.