Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.—Thomas Merton

God turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water. The upright see it and are glad; and all wickedness stops its mouth. Let those who are wise give heed to these things, and consider the steadfast love of God. Psalm 107: 35; 42-43

I spen...

When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.  I come into the peace of...

In my sermon for the First Sunday of Advent at Montclair Presbyterian Church in Oakland, I “outed” myself as a mystic. Clearly not a FAMOUS mystic, but I do have mystical tendencies, value the teachings of Christian mystics (in particular) and I have embraced a number...

The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us alway...

The future of the Church is jazz.

I first wrote that sentence in 1996 as I was just starting out in ordained ministry in the United Church of Christ. At the time, I was serving as a community-based chaplain serving women living with HIV/AIDS and out-of- town families c...

Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression.  It is so spontaneous.  And after singing, I think the violin.  Since I cannot sing, I paint. – Georgia O’Keefe

Loving opera is something I inherited somewhat by accident from my father.  H...

Imagination is more important than knowledge. – Albert Einstein

I am fascinated by prophets – both ancient and contemporary.  The ancient ones such as Isaiah had the ability to both warn of danger and demise AND to spin beautiful visions of the world the way it “ou...

Psalm 104 : 1-4 (NRSV)

Bless the Lord, O my soul.
O Lord my God, you are very great.
You are clothed with honor and majesty,
2     wrapped in light as with a garment.
You stretch out the heavens like a tent,
3     you set the beams of yourchambers on...

What a crazy political time it is, this summer of 2013!  The Supreme Court of the United States has just gutted the voting rights act making it easier for states to discriminate against minority groups in the balloting process and then on the very next day allowed a lo...

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott

I recently got to live-tweet the final dress rehearsal for San Francisco Opera’s new opera, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Mark A...