The hardest thing we are asked to do in this world is to remain aware of suffering, suffering about which we can do nothing. – May Sarton As we enter into the narrative world of the Gospel of Mark, we will follow Jesus to encounter lots of miraculous healing stories, crazy characters, and quite a few demons. It really is a pretty fantastical journey viewed with 21st century lenses. Still, we recognize ourselves at every turn. We need healing. A lot of us are crazier than w

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 spend a lot of time with folks who have no interest in the Bible, less interest in Jesus, and zero interest in the church. I’m not surprised. Too many “christians” have done so many hateful, despicable, and disgusting t

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. – Eleanor Roosevelt “Futuring” is a special discipline within the humanities that is used a lot by businesses trying to get ahead of new market opportunities. It is also a fairly complicated and incredibly inexact science with high stakes outcomes for companies seeking to remain profitable in a rapidly-changing world. Lots of church folks trying to understand the decline of oldline churches such as the Un

I often tell folks that the most important and useful training I received for ministry came from my days as an opera stage manager and production coordinator. Seminary certainly taught me a great deal about theology, exegesis, and history, but doing triple rep in an opera company taught me about the power of patterns. Patterns are everywhere and yet they can often be elusive to discern. On the other hand, it is also pretty easy to establish a new pattern and it can be trans

Our practice is to find our true home. When we breathe, we breathe in such a way that we can find our true home. When we make a step, we make a step in such a way that we touch our true home with our feet. – Thich Nhat Han I’ve been in California now for 28 years and 23 of those years have been spent right here in San Francisco with a few years in Marin county while I was in seminary. But anyone who knows me for more than a few minutes detects my Texas roots. I don’t always

I was recently thanked by an opera singer via twitter for being so “enthusiastic”. My enthusiasm for opera is long and deep with roots in childhood and I spent much of my 20’s working as a stage manager, production coordinator, and/or cueing supertitles in Houston, Norfolk, San Antonio, Austin, and Los Angeles. But I’m not littering my twitter feed with opera enthusiasms just because I have enjoyed a particular performance. In our current cultural climate, those of us that

During a fabulous retreat on March 8th, 2014 for the women of Montclair Presbyterian, the Rev. Lois Mueller invited us all to imagine ourselves as not only blessed, but called to be “blessers”. What are some of the ways that we can bless one another? I certainly feel blessed most of the time, but I’m not sure that I’m always a blessing all the time. I do know that when I do manage to bless others, I receive twice as many blessings in return. During the retreat, Lois showed a

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 wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the w

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 of spiritual practices that are often labeled “good for mystics”. My journey with mysticism began when I was introduced to the great medieval Christian mystic Hildegard von Bingen. Hildegard’s life and writing,

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 always. – Willa Cather, (1873 -1947) U.S. novelist, poet and journalist Over the years I have laughed at art critics and historians talk about the abstract expressionism of the great painter Georgia O’Keefe. Her pa