“Up from the waters into life.” However you interpret the sacrament of baptism in your tradition, the ritual almost always involves water.

In the traditional story of the Transfiguration, three disciples go with Jesus to the top of a mountain where they see a vision. Moses and Elijah appear and talk with Jesus, who appears radiant.

Light in the darkness. In every culture, in every religion, in every wisdom tradition, light is a metaphor for knowledge, sight, understanding, consciousness, awakening, birth and rebirth.

We make a new beginning every morning, indeed in every moment, but there is something about the yearly start in January that captures the imagination.

As Henry Van Dyke wrote nearly a century ago, “There is a better thing than the observance of Christmas day, and that is, keeping Christmas…

No time during the year is more perilous for the progressive church musician than Advent and Christmas!

Every birth is a miracle. The Christmas story gives us a chance to relive, to re-experience that miracle every year.

The story of the visit of the three wise men from the East has inspired countless retellings.

Can it be Advent again, already? I’m not ready… But then, are we ever “ready” for Advent? Perhaps that’s the point: Advent is the time to get ready.

Giving thanks, expressing gratitude … it’s a foundational part of a happy life.

How do you experience the presence of God? Is it being out in nature, or hearing/singing/playing music, or finding selflessness in meditation… it’s a universal experience that is also intensely individual.

We can be opposed to war in principle, and opposed to war in all its ugly specificities, and still express our gratitude and love for those who fight on our behalf.

So many conceptions of God… and each carefully described in words, which are by definition inadequate to capture that which they are trying to describe.

It is easy for progressive Christians and their churches to feel isolated, as if they alone have stumbled on a great secret about living by the wisdom that originally inspired Christianity, and no one else seems to understand.

Sacred Energy (Mass of the Universe) is a narrated musical exploration of the mystical sense of oneness and sacredness of all that is.

William Blake (1757-1827) was an astonishingly creative person. We know him for his mystical poetry, his unusual paintings and his printmaking inventions.

Tell the old story with new words, sing the old song with new meaning, find a new interpretation of the old metaphor… We are comforted by our traditions even as we refuse to be bound by them.

All wisdom traditions understand what it means to speak from the heart. But with the veneration of science and technology that exists today, it is increasingly difficult to hear one’s heart-voice.

“Time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away; they fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.” (Isaac Watts)

Autumn….the harvest…. the fall equinox…. days grow shorter and we are reminded of nature’s cycle moving inexorably toward winter yet again.

Autumn is the time when we return from our travels, with pictures to show and stories to tell. Visiting other places gives us a perspective on home…

Transition into a time of worship can take many forms: a quiet moment of deep breathing and centering, a poem, a responsive invocation, gathering music…

Praise and gratitude go hand-in-hand. Both are a natural response to our recognition that, as the old saying goes, “God is God. You are not.”

The inspirational power of a good idea is constantly amazing. Consider the case of California organic farmer Michael O’Gorman, who put together two seemly-unrelated trends: the aging of American farmers and the high unemployment among returning military veterans.

When the way ahead seems uncertain, when the news is mostly negative, when we feel powerless to effect change, it is good to remember that we are hardly alone.

We are each walking up the mountain of spiritual enlightenment, each on our own path, each discovering the same ancient truths in our own way and in our own words.

  With the Olympic Games set to begin in Tokyo on July 23rd, we celebrate one of the few venues that brings the nations of the world together peacefully.  While we cheer for the athletes from our …

All cultures have rituals. One of the liberating outcomes of worshipping in a progressive faith community is the freedom to create new rituals as well as adapt old ones.

Getting to peace begins at home and extends out to neighborhoods, cities, states, countries and across the world. The challenge always is to stand for peace without using violence to accomplish it.

Nature provides us with a never-ending source of imagery for the Divine.

More than 1200 years ago, the Islamic saint Rabia of Basra wrote:
In my soul there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church where I kneel.
Prayer should bring us to an altar where no walls or names exist…
(from “Love Poems from God”, trans. Daniel Ladinsky)

Being a father is one of the most challenging and most rewarding roles we may ever get to take on. Particularly in this day of self-help books and über-parenting, it is perhaps helpful to remember Clarence Kelland’s words about his father:

Consider these few lines by beloved poet Mary Oliver:
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Change is a challenge at any age in almost any context. Human nature seems to prefer the known, the predictable. Churches, as we know, are no exception!

Prayer is our heart speaking. In most of our Protestant churches, we get an abundance of head speaking, which makes the balance afforded by prayer time all the more important.

Pentecost commemorates the descent of the Spirit on the followers of Jesus, seven weeks after Easter.