When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. – Jimi Hendrix, rock guitarist Throughout scripture, we are called over and over again to love. And indeed we do love. We love our families. We love our country. We love our comfort. We love holidays. We love our things. We love our success. But do we love God? Do we love God more than these things? When we truly learn to love God, we cannot help but love our neighbor too and the world shi

God will find a way to let us know that God is with us in this place, wherever we are, however far we think we’ve run. And maybe that’s one reason we worship — to respond to grace. We praise God not to celebrate our own faith but to give thanks for the faith God has in us. To let ourselves look at God, and let God look back at us. And to laugh, and sing, and be delighted because God has called us God’s own. – Kathleen Norris in Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith Being

I will light Candles this Christmas; Candles of joy despite all sadness, Candles of hope where despair keeps watch, Candles of courage for fears ever present, Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days, Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens, Candles of love to inspire all my living, Candles that will burn all the year long. – Howard Thurman, (1899-1981) author, philosopher, pastor As humans, we have an ancient relationship of love and fear when it comes to fire. Fire is

Guilt is only useful insofar as it points to a change that you can make. Otherwise just let it go. – Beverly Wildung Harrison, (1932-2012) feminist Christian ethicist, professor, and scholar Just how much do you let God be God? I admit that I’m not very good at doing the “let go and let God” thing. I was raised to be independent and self-reliant with several helpings of Texas stubborn swirled in to boot. But my heart stood still when Bev Harrison made the comment above in

You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born . . . fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter into you long before it happens . . . just wait for the birth . . . for the hour of new clarity. – Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875-1926 When Jesus advises us to “become as a child”, I think this is part of the invitation: to re- imagine how life might be in the future and even learn to play – like children – with our lives. It is so easy to get

Certainly the recent massacre in Newtown, Connecticut is weighing heavily on many minds and hearts. But some of us were already grieving during this Advent season, so our tears were close to the surface. A seminary classmate died earlier in the week and a former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church on Wednesday. My Uncle Lee Roy Valliant died during the holidays two years ago and my beloved great-grandmother, Lina Burgin McLain died on Christmas day in 1974, making this w

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. – Anatole France, French poet (1844-1924) The spiritual discipline of “letting go” is one of the most difficult to master. We like to hang on to our “stuff”. I have a recurring dream that I am climbing through an enormous obstacle course when I have the realization that I have left my suitcase behind. As I cl

We Americans are an extremely competitive gang. We love sports, we love cutthroat business, and we are deeply envious of one another. It is especially hard to keep our envy in check during the holiday season when Madison Avenue stokes the fires of “I want one like yours” in each of us. Indeed most advertising plays on our envy. The actor in the commercial is handsome, dashing, well-dressed, and everything we want to be. AND it’s all because he is drinking the right drink

The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenements halls and whispered in the sounds of silence. – Paul Simon, 20th century German theologian Dorothee Söelle, in her brilliant book, Suffering, describes silence as the surest sign of despair. Healing from such profound suffering begins with speech. When we are finally able to name the source of our suffering and despair, it begins to lose its’ power to paralyze and mute our lives. The culture that Jesus

Maybe one of the great unknown – unrecognized – truths of life is that light always dawns, eventually; that there is no such thing as a perpetual darkness of soul. I know that in my own case the darkness only existed because I refused the light. I simply did not want the light. I had been in the cocoon of darkness for so long I thought that it was light. – Joan Chittester, Called to Question Science has shown that the old “boiling frog” story is incorrect. The canard goes