Let’s take care of one another. Let’s share our resources whether that is money or toilet paper. Let’s inject humor into our conversation and encourage one another. This crisis will be over one day, and when it is, let’s have carried on in a way that we can be proud of.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” Where fear can make us believe that we aren’t worthy or relevant, there is inherent value in facing your fears and doing things that take you out of your comfort zone.

    It was almost five years ago now, and I can still see her smile. It was a beautiful smile; a smile which I often return to in my mind’s-eye. I have long-since forgotten her name. …

“Social Distancing” doesn’t mean we can’t still come together.
Join me every day of the week for an hour of discussion on various relevant spiritual topics.

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.

It is extremely unfortunate that the coronavirus is negatively impacting so many (especially those who are elderly or living in poverty) and disrupting our day-to-day lives, however, one valuable insight that may result from this disastrous virus is congregational awareness about the necessity of technology.

In the desperate final days of Bonhoeffer’s life, he wrote from prison about the futility of trying to talk to stupid people about facts, as many of his neighbors and fellow church folk simply rolled along with the Nazi movement. M. Scott Peck defined evil as a kind of “militant ignorance,” a refusal to deal with the known facts of reality.

Bishop Yvette Flunder preaches at The City of Refuge, 8400 Enterprise Way, Oakland, CA.

Changing the world vs/and changing ourselves. Today we consider the remarkable life of Eleanor Roosevelt who was first lady during the New Deal, WWII, and was our first ambassador to the United Nations.

If God is the source of Love, let us worship God by loving. If God is the ground of being, let us worship God by having the courage to be more fully human; the embodiment of the Divine.

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.

Rev. Jasper D. Peters is Lead Pastor at Belong Church in Denver.

As Leonard Bernstein said, art doesn’t stop a war or change historical events, but it can change how we see the world, how we think, and in that way, it changes how we act, how we vote, and how we recreate the world. This talk adds to the advocacy of Leander Keck in advocating that churches employ art, poetry, music, and architecture to “astonish our souls,” to feed our being after the deprivations of a hard and hate filled world.

In worship at Mt Hollywood Church in LA, Sunday, Feb 16, I “channeled” William Jennings Bryan, best known as the fundamentalist Christian lawyer who defended six-day creationism in the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925.

It seems like falling in love and staying in love should be easy. However, clearly, it is one of the most difficult things that almost everyone wants to do. At least a part of the problem rests with an out of date conception of what marriage must or should be, coupled with fears rooted in our earliest years and our connection to our parents.

PATHWAYS Theological Education, Inc., is a Progressive Christian learning community seeking to empower transformative leadership for justice and peace within and beyond the church by engaging heart and mind to consider what it means to know, love and serve God in today’s changing world. 

“What do you mean when you say, ‘progressive christianity?'” I am often asked this question and so rather than a sermon, this Sunday’s reflection explores the contours of our journey as we wrestle with the MYSTERY that is our SOURCE.

Thurber Lectures
Thurber Conversation & Guest Preacher — Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis at The American Church in Paris