In A Joyful Path, Year Two, we focus on some of the main tenets of Progressive Christianity and Spirituality, giving our children the foundation they need to walk the path of Jesus in today's world. It has stories and affirmations written to help children clarify their own personal beliefs while staying open to the wisdom of other traditions.

Pluralism challenges us to move beyond all four of these responses to the other. As Pete puts it, “… in a genuine encounter with the other, at first I see you as weird and monstrous.

  We have barely begun to deal with the fundamental changes that must be effected within our Christian faith. – John Cobb(1) So

Wisdom from 13 Traditions on 9 Universal Themes: Justice, Gratitude, Peace, Service, Compassion, Forgiveness, Healing, Nature, Prayer

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!

If there is one overarching characteristic of a fundamentalist, it is a mindset fixated on certainty of truth, that one possesses the absolute truth, the Bible. My faulty logic went something like this: since God is an absolute being, His word is then absolute and since the Bible is God’s word, it is absolute and since I have God’s word in my hand- I possess absolute truth. There is no arguing with that kind of mindset. Oh, by the way, it was only a short step in the flow of the logic when I began to unconsciously view myself as god-assuming I possessed all the answers and everyone else was wrong.