“Diversity is inevitable. Pluralism is an achievement.” We sometimes use these words — diversity and pluralism — as if they meant the same thing.

How strange and wonderful is our home, our earth, with its swirling vaporous atmosphere, its flowing and frozen liquids, its trembling plants, its creeping, crawling, climbing creatures

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

Some of the best advice I ever got from my spiritual director was to read Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. “This will change how you think about Jesus,” she said.

You can’t get to Easter without going through Good Friday.

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.

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

Whatever your own stance is on interpreting the Bible, there’s no denying its place as a foundational source of literary references in our culture.

“God is a verb” — one of those phrases that occurs independently to different people and then keeps showing up.

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.”).

There is an old, old story told in many cultures that goes something like this:

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

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.

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

Progressive Christianity lost one of its giants last week with the death of Marcus Borg. His books and lectures opened up the academic world of historical Jesus studies to the rest of us, and we will be forever in his debt.

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…..

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.

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.

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.

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of all true art and science.

The Earth needs our help, and what better place to tell that story than in our worship liturgies?

Autumn… harvest… Indian summer… waiting for the rains… So many images of this time of year

“Our table is open to everyone because Jesus’ table fellowship was open to everyone.”

Where would we be without metaphors in our spiritual conversations?

To be on a spiritual journey is to be constantly evolving our “mental models” about how the world works, how we fit into it, who or what God is (or isn’t) and how God works in the world. Scientists use mental models all the time.

All wisdom traditions understand the need for letting go.  And all wisdom traditions understand how difficult it is for humans to do this.

If you want to understand how we could live in a world where every religion speaks of peace and yet every nation is eventually involved in war, look no farther than what we teach our children.

A friend once described herself as a “knitter,” but she wasn’t talking about yarn. She likes to bring people together and help create beautiful things from their unity. What a wonderful mission that is!