Christianity, at its core, is about love of neighbor. But really, what does that mean? In our increasingly divisive country, that can feel challenging, if not downright impossible.

The Tarrying Place represents the wit and wisdom of the community of more than one hundred women-folx who make up our ever-expanding Circle, each of whom is engaged in their own life’s journey to activist-centered self and community care reflected in our guiding mantras.

She’s a gay rights activist. He’s an evangelical Christian. In our new video series, they explain why "impossible" friendships can be our most valuable.

“For the Love of Hussain (A.S.)” recounts the reflections and experiences of a Christian Pastor from America on the fifty-mile walk from Najaf to Karbala, Iraq for Arbaeen in October 2018.

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Work out your faith and renew hope through our film library of spiritual leaders and contemplative pieces.

    When I Am Among the Trees When I am among the trees,
 especially the willows and the honey locust, 
equally the

The Charter created a Islamophobia Handbook a few years ago. The first section, "Speaking Out and Taking Action," may be very helpful to all of us as we navigate through these difficult times.

Music empowers action fo social change. Inclusive Songs for Resistance and Social Action will contribute to gender, racial, economic, environmental and other justice movements.

On November 9, 2016, the United States concluded a blisteringly polarized, vicious political campaign cycle. The results — especially the surprise upset of Hillary Clinton by Donald J. Trump in the presidential election — stunned people as devastating or miraculous, depending on different standpoints. Concerned about civil rights, immigration, international relations, civility, multiculturalism, and a host of other issues, many people found hope in short supply after the election results came in.

What would you do if this was your brother/son/friend? Many of the brave and Peaceful Water Protectors of Standing Rock are now facing serious criminal charges! This is the moment for us to rise and show our gratitude for the people who risked their lives to protect our water.

The following four documents were prepared by members of the Solidariteam. The Oceti Sakowin Camp Protocols were written with camp elders.

esus taught that lust is as bad as adultery. Covetousness is as bad as theft. Anger is as bad as murder. His was an "argumentum ad absurdum" against anybody claiming to be morally pure, which was a real social problem in Israel in his time. The wealthy, leisured Pharisees used countless fussy purity codes to bludgeon into submission the mass of common people who could not afford the time and money to comply.

tation, salute it and say: "I salute all those Americans who risked their lives for my right to vote!" Ask your friends and family members, or in a ritual in worship, asking parishioners: "With which hand will you be voting on November 8?" Take that hand and hold it with yours, and say: "May love (or the love that is God) guide your hand to vote for the common good!"

1. The seasons of the human heart reflect the seasons of nature. 2. For most things there is a right time but for some things such as manipulation, oppression and injustice there is never a right time.

Re: the Oregon mass shooting: "Harper-Mercer's mother, Laurel Harper, shared her son's passion for guns... I was so appalled by the Roseburg incident that I needed to deal with my despair by flying my fingers across my computer keyboard. This is the result – a spoof on the absurdity of owning guns for self-defense:

In this guide to soulful service, Jim Burklo draws from his deep well of experience working with homeless people, leading service-learning programs for university students, and pastoring churches. With touching stories, poetry, and parables, Hitchhiking to Alaska illustrates universal principles about the spirituality of helping relationships.

With thirty-seven states now legal proponents of marriage equality along with our nation’s capitol LGBTQ Americans and our allies knew it would be

The planet doesn’t need saving. We do. Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez is not your average 14 year old. Dubbed the ‘Anti-Beiber’, he is mobilizing his army of teens in 25 countries to demand greener policy from our world’s leaders

THEME Dreams and Harsh Reality THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION For the rich poverty is obscene. For the poor wealth is obscene. For God both are obscene.

A week after the short film What's Possible opened the U.N. Climate Summit, producer Lyn Lear and director Louie Schwartzberg are back with a sequel that expands on their vision for climate change solutions.

Deeper Love is a web resource, updated regularly with input from its users, offering faith-based language for progressive political and social action. It provides activists, lay and clergy people, politicians, campaigners, and organizers with inspiring rhetoric to advance social change. Deeper Love is edited by Rev. Jim Burklo, Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California, with the Theological Reflection Committee of Progressive Christians Uniting. Deeper Love is a project of Progressive Christians Uniting – pcu-la.org - a social justice activist organization based in Los Angeles, California, a Partner Organization of ours.

Theme: Dreamtime Reality -- Season of Hope Thoughts for Reflection To travel hopefully is the mark of a pilgrim. To believe one has arrived is the mark of the insecure.

What's Possible, a film produced by Lyn Lear for the United Nations Climate Summit, directed by Louie Schwartzberg, narrated by Morgan Freeman with an original score by Hans Zimmer

Today, over 2,000,000 Americans are in jail or in prison. We've got 5% of the world's population, but 25% of its prisoners. More black men are under the control of the criminal justice system in America today than were enslaved before the Civil War began. Our prison-industrial complex has become the latest of a long series of forms of systematic oppression against people of color. Lawyer and activist Michelle Alexander rightly calls it "The New Jim Crow" in her recent book.

We come to the desert at least as much for what is not here as much as for what is. Monastics of every religion are drawn to it. Moses encountered God in a bush on a desert mountain. The first theologians of Christianity were known as the Desert Fathers. In wilderness they prayed, meditated, contemplated – uncluttering their hearts and minds in an uncluttered space. Mohammed went to a desert cave and there he waited until the Angel Gabriel dictated the Koran to him. Around the same time, Buddhist monks retreated to the mountainous deserts of Central Asia to meditate.

Michael Brown should not have been shot dead by police in Ferguson, Missouri. His hands were up. He was unarmed. It doesn't make any difference whether or not he had stolen earlier something that day. If he had committed such a crime, he should have been given appropriate justice, not a volley of bullets. At the time he was shot, there was simply no excuse for what happened to him. Somebody else had his life stolen from him, too: a man named Jesus, killed for no good reason. Jesus also died with his hands up. He had been ethnically profiled by the Roman occupying army in Jerusalem, and was brutally murdered on a cross.

“Bread for me is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one," wrote Nikolai Berdyaev, a 19th-20th c. Russian philosopher and theologian. Is there a more important spiritual question than this one? Today may be a particularly good time to ask it in America.

To hold a bloom of California buckwheat in the palm of your hand is to admire an infinity of heavens. Each little round flower is a mass of tinier flowers, their delicate pink stamens pointing out in every direction of the universe. The tough stems of the plant, with their little spiky leaves, stay green even now during one of the worst droughts in memory. Hiking on the flanks of Boney Mountain in the Santa Monica range a week ago, in an area ravaged by wildfire, I stopped to gaze at a buckwheat bush and congratulate it on its survival.

The form of the blessing differ, but the essential message is the same: we give thanks to the Love that is God for the good that comes through our taxes. They are a special form of our "offerings" in worship. Many blessings flow from them, and divine guidance is needed for us to have the wisdom to see to it they are spent for the best purposes.