Mending

How shall we mend you, sweet Soul?
What shall we use, and how is it
in the first place you’ve come to be torn?
Come sit. Come tell me.
We will find a way to mend you.

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A Pattern So Vast

I still use the copy of The Joy of Cooking I got for Christmas in 1969. This now-fragile cookbook has memories stained into many of its pages (especially the peanut-butter cookie page).

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Finding Our Place in the World

It was the third summer of my seminary training, and I was completing the required “Clinical Pastoral Education” by serving as a student chaplain in a women’s prison near Tacoma, Washington.

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From Your Minister

I have mentioned my garden in past columns—how much joy and life I find there and how central to my spiritual practice it is from spring through fall.

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REsources for Living

I’ve been thinking about the Days of Turning, the ten days between Rosh Hashana (September 28th this year) and Yom Kippur. Rosh Hashana is the Jewish New Year…

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The Impossible and the Laughable

Well, this sermon does mention Jesus and his resurrection. There also will be mention of Pharaoh, Moses, and the parting of the Red Sea. I will speak of miracles and I will also invoke the supernatural — things so mysterious so as to be inexplicable. But bear with me, because my starting point is something theologically neutral: particle physics.

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Prayer 101

To keep ourselves halfway decently in tune, we must tinker all the time: here on our anger, there on our bitterness, lethargy, pettiness, or pride. Fully to love we must mute our fears; fully to serve, tone down our piping little egos. In order to produce anything like beautiful music, we must join in the band of our brothers and sisters, be an instrument of their peace, a humble instrument of justice and mercy, a dedicated instrument of truth.

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