Looking for a spiritual retreat to tide you over in quiet contemplation during the holy days leading up to Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year's Day, and Epiphany? Here are many choices — some Christian and inclusive, others multifaith — from which you can find a perfect match for your needs.

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).  

The Unity Flag was first flown by College Park Baptist Church at the FaithAction Unity Walk in Greensboro, NC on August 5, 2017 and symbolizes a commitment to basic human and civil rights for all people.

We knit our hearts and intentions together in this solemn moment to resolve individually and as family, friends, and community to honor and support these two in the vows they now make.

Like many people, I am absolutely appalled by the ugly, hateful and destructive chaos emerging in this country. I have also wondered what I, a retired Oakland High School English teacher and Berkeley pastor, now living in a small town on the Oregon coast, could do to somehow change the dialogue and direction as to where the nation is going. I hope to do so through … Christmas carols!

Give us, O God, leaders whose hearts are large enough to match the breadth of our own souls and give us souls strong enough to follow leaders of vision and wisdom.

The Christian writer G. K. Chesterton had the right idea when he said we need to get in the habit of "taking things with gratitude and not taking things for granted." Gratitude puts everything in a fresh perspective; it enables us to see the many blessings all around us. And the more ways we find to give thanks, the more things we find to be grateful for.

This past Sunday morning in Los Angeles was bright with strong wind blowing clear air over the mountains from the high desert. The palm trees swayed along Highway 10 west into Santa Monica. Two right turns at the Cloverfield exit took me past the garbage company and into the chain-link gate of Bergamot Station, a former warehouse complex turned into dozens of art studios. In the back corner, in a galvanized iron building, is the "Writer's Bootcamp", a complex with offices and meeting spaces, where I found Thad's.

For deeper love we spread the bread I won’t be full till all are fed Till every soul has home and bed The rest of us can’t move ahead

We are here to praise and enjoy God with body and soul, mind and heart, with song and word, with hands and feet. We are here to give because of the abundance God has given us, to share with each other, and to receive, because God has created us to depend on each other. We are here to celebrate the differences that otherwise might divide us: differences of age, of body, of culture, of opinion, of ability, of religious conviction. We are here to put things in perspective: to celebrate what matters, to laugh about things we take too seriously, to cry about things that truly touch our hearts. So may it be this morning: Amen!