The peace that we share when we turn and shake hands
Is simply the peace that our Savior commands.

The world will now be faced with a time of moral testing as Covid 19 spreads from pole to pole. The early response of hoarding toilet paper and hand sanitizer is not an encouraging sign predicting whether our better angels will be revealed or our fearful, selfish demons.

But like all things – life finds a way. I took my ennui and fogginess, I watched what was going on around the world, and decided the complete “grayness” I was feeling was to be my focus. But I was tired of feeling gray – you know that disheartened, powerless, helpless, frozen kind of feeling?

  To soothe souls in election year, Portland Rabbi seeks 10K+ meditators. This beautiful, full-color, 8.5″ x 11″ book of simple, enjoyable instructions will get you meditating. Follow the frustrated Stallion  and the slightly-competitive Dragon I teach …

Sometimes, in the midst of a crowd we experience the kind of temptations that bring our demons to the surface and we have to take a long hard look at where our desires might lead us. It is not always easy to choose LOVE over fear.

Tell your drama and listen to others. Teach each other to to live out loud. Be a drama addict with me and we will heal, living what is real – in service to all. We will each spring forth, being wonderfully dramatic, writing renewed lives filled with sheer joy and light.

A stunning Spiritual Handbook drawn from the substantive teachings of a mystical/prophetic genius offering a sublime roadmap for spirituality and action.Praise for The Tao of Thomas Aquinas

Dr. Rev. Yvette Flunder, singing and preaching at Canadian Memorial about Numbers 11:24-30, and the radically inclusive love of Jesus.

“At the center of the Christmas story is hope…hope which comes to us in the form of a vulnerable, poor baby. A child, not a king, changes the world. God appears to us as a marginalized, Afro-Semitic, Jewish child from Nazareth in Palestine. A child who grows up to teach us to welcome the stranger. How would our world be different if we loved our neighbors as ourselves?” asks the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, senior minister of Middle Collegiate Church.

Human child of human mother,
see the Christ has come to birth,
demonstrating now in living
every person’s human worth.

I want to give some thought to one of the most often invoked rituals in Christian and secular circles, namely giving of thanks. Thanksgiving, depending on the bible translation, is used about thirty-five times in the bible. The word “thanks” counts over a hundred times. Thank, thanked, thanking, thankful, thankfulness and thankworthy, all are used in some translation of the bible.

An exercise in self-love.

I fully support regular church attendance but not to worship. I go to give thanks to my ancient ancestors who strove so hard against violence and kept humanity progressing. I’ve written a sample service for updating Christianity to today’s reality.

Holidays have always been challenging as families from divergent views try to gather around one table and reconnect. Now, in our deeply polarized political environment in which most of us only expose ourselves to media that confirms our biases, even people with DNA and history in common find one another to be so profoundly “other” that they can barely tolerate one another.

I Pray Anyway. Devotions for the Ambivalent by Joyce Wilson-Sanford is comprised of 365 daily reflections and 12 monthly personal stories. It tells of the author’s return to a prayer/devotions practice as she shares her own very naked, very funny, very touching prayers and reflections.

Wise and successful people tell us we learn through making mistakes and trying again. Entrepreneurs, musicians, social workers, philanthropists, artists all gave it a go and, after years of trial and error and disasters, with lots of luck, they succeeded.

  God of Love is Mirabai Starr’s passionate and personal exploration of the interconnected wisdom of the three Abrahamic faiths. She shares an overview of essential teachings, stories of saints and spiritual masters, prophetic calls for peace …

Prayer invites us to quiet our spirits,
to quell the distractions that otherwise avert our attention
from virtues to banalities of existence.