Reflection In our culture, achievement and productivity are valued as the benchmarks of success. If the answer to the question, “What do you do?” cannot be summed up in a job title or a listing of accomplishments, you are left feeling somehow hollow or having been dismissed as insignificant. Yet one can be just as negligent or distracted or untransformed…
Reflection Christianity is about new life. It is about the fulfillment of God’s promise and hope for new creation and, as far as we know, we are the one species on the planet who can respond to God’s grace in freedom. Resurrection is not an event that might happen in some remote future, but it is the power of the…
Mother’s Day Reflection Motherhood is the giving of oneself in order to bring forth, nurture and sustain the life of another. There is an unconditional quality to the love of a true mother. Motherhood challenges one to love, to teach her children without domination, to be a harbor of safety and unceasing welcome. A mother’s love continues to surround her…
Reflection “Christianity began as a revolutionary nonviolent movement promoting a new kind of aliveness on the margins of society…It exposed a system based on domination, privilege, and violence and proclaimed in its place a vision of mutual service, mutual responsibility, and peaceable neighborliness…It was a peace movement, a love movement, a joy movement, a justice movement, an integrity movement, an…
Reflection All of us are caught up in complex situations. We each have multiple responsibilities and minimal disposable time. Yet this is where we have to live our spiritually aware lives. Not when things get better. Not when the frenzy tapers off or ceases altogether. Not when we retire. Now. In the middle of whatever is happening, we are to…
Reflection Faith in the broader sense is not any specific religious belief but rather an awareness that Incomprehensible Mystery is present in our lives. It is an attunement to the sacred and an openness to the possibilities of a relationship with the Holy One. The challenge to faith is not so much disbelief as indifference or resistance to God’s movement…
Reflection At this historic time, we are immersed in all the advantages and perils of our world. We live in the tension of the now, the tension of being where we are and of still being who we are. We are normal people of our own century within the culture of a particular nation. Our beliefs as consumers, citizens, parents,…
Reflection We are hopefully looking toward the easing of restrictions as this pandemic is slowly coming under control in our area. What will we have learned when this time of common danger is behind us? Will the memory of the many acts of courage and kindness that have brought us together, of the people on whom we really depend for…
Reflection Blessings remind us that our lives are full of moments waiting to be lived fully. When we pause and offer a blessing in silence, we pay attention to life’s ordinary moments, consecrate them, and imbue them with meaning. When we join and bless a meal, we remind ourselves that it is a gift from the earth and the labor…
Reflection I am the vine. You are the branches. John 15:1-8 In Judea, a vineyard was the symbol of a type of national identity. Often, in the Old Testament, Israel is pictured as the vine or the vineyard of God. In the eyes of its people, Israel was the true vine whose roots ran all the way back to Abraham,…