To listen attentively is a great gift. It is more than just being quiet (or, as author Simon Sinek puts it, “There is a difference between listening and waiting for your turn to speak.”).

“Preaching, teaching and healing” is the usual description of Jesus’ ministry.

Poetry and religion seem to go together: two approaches to the challenge of trying to capture the ineffable in words.

New music telling the ancient story can bring that story alive in our own time.

We’ve heard the story of Holy Week so many times that we’ve come to think there couldn’t possibly be another way to tell it.

It is often a huge insight to realize how much control we have over our own thoughts.

There are places in the world that hold a special energy. You can feel it when you go there.

So it is with violence, with the destruction wrought by human beings on each other. It is in our hands, it is in our hands.

Grief comes in all sizes, because loss comes in all sizes. Small sadnesses happen every day, and we mark them and move on. Intense sadness comes to everyone eventually, and we struggle not to be overwhelmed by it.

There is a story that connects the Lord’s Prayer with the six-petaled rose at the center of an eleven-circuit labyrinth, such as the famous one found at Chartres Cathedral. Each of the petals corresponds to part of the Lord’s Prayer,

Beginnings and endings are so connected… every beginning will eventually have an ending, and every ending makes possible a new beginning.

Metanoia is a word worth learning. The Greek means literally “change your understanding” or “think differently.” In our modern parlance we might say, “Awaken!”

Audacious prayer is the cry of the heart. Mahatma Gandhi once wrote, “In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”

In one sense, New Year’s Day is no different than any other day. After all, the calendar we live by is a human construction.

Christmas Eve is the culmination of the anticipation and preparation of Advent. This is what we have been waiting for and now it is here. Traditions – whatever yours are – hold comfort and connection. For a little while, our world keeps a different kind of time.

Reflecting on the birth of Jesus in poetry gives us yet another way to approach and assimilate this event. Birth is always a miraculous occurrence, and this birth even more so.

Worship is a 'receipt' given to God in return for the divine gifts of life which we receive.... It is an artful response to our awe and wonderment at the miracle of creation which surrounds us.....

The struggle for justice is never-ending, and it belongs to all of us. Joining forces in a fight for justice is often the most reliable common ground we have with people of very different creeds and cultures.

Thanksgiving is an American holiday, but giving thanks is a practice for everyone, around the world, at all times.

Autumn feels different depending on which cycle you respond to most strongly. Underneath, we are all still tied to the land, metaphorical farmers if not literal ones.

Progressive worship music can come from almost anywhere. It doesn’t have to be a 200-year-old hymn, although that can work if it has meaning and resonance for a particular congregation.

Every time we lose someone we love, someone who inspired us and now has left us to carry on without them, someone whose presence was a part of our daily happiness, we must re-map our world.

All Saints' Day (or All Hallows' Day on November 1st) and All Souls' Day (also called Day of the Dead or Dia de los Muertos on November 2nd) combine to form a special time each year to remember those who have gone before us. These church holidays are celebrations of gratitude, the continuity of life and a reminder of our place in the cycle.

Finding new words to express ancient wisdom is an essential part of progressive Christianity. Not only does such an effort put the fundamental ideas into modern language, but the very act of searching for the new words is part of coming to understand what you believe and how you want to share it with others.

Faith communities can be a “safe place for uncomfortable conversations.”

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they do not belong to you.” (Khalil Gibran)

Most of us have let go of the God-metaphor from our childhoods -- the old man with a beard who lives in the sky (aka “the Sistine Chapel God”).

Wholeness is the journey toward integration of body, mind and soul… our own unique balance between all the aspects of being human.

Ancient wisdom from all traditions teaches that the key to aging gracefully is facing and accepting our own mortality.

Where would we be without reflection? Pondering the past, imagining a new future, integrating our experiences into our sense of self… reflection, and the course corrections we make as a result, allows space for the Spirit to show up in our lives.