Posts Tagged ‘patheos blog’

2014-12-23 Ministry can be spiritually, emotionally, and even physically taxing.  So, how do clergy keep at it for so long?  What helps them stay fresh, alert, and focused on mission?  Recently, I asked a Facebook group of Unitarian Universalist ministers to share their “ministry mantras,” using no more than 8 words.  A ministry mantra might…

2014-10-27 This blog post, and the excerpts of a sermon on which this blog post is based, are both inspired by [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Jy5R-3sDA4[/youtube] a song, “Help Somebody,” by Susan Werner. “I got plenty and then some….what do I do?” I can not get this song out of my head, once it’s in there…and because of this…

2012-06-30 The Supreme Court decision earlier this week regarding the Affordable Health Care Act is yet another reminder that we can anticipate an election season fraught with intense partisanship. The free exchange of ideas, even radically disparate ones, is essential to a healthy democracy. Yet we also know that discourse in this country is not…

2012-06-27 The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “Religion is something infinitely simple, ingenious.  It is not knowledge, not content of feeling … it is not duty and not renunciation, it is not restriction: but in the infinite extent of the universe it is a direction of the heart.” While I cannot agree wholeheartedly with this…

2014-09-23 When I went to Ferguson I thought I had something to offer. I was wrong. There was nothing for me to offer. When I was immersed in hundreds of voices chanting “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” I raised my white hands. I raised my white voice. But all the while I knew that the pain…

2014-08-04 I just scheduled a hair cut. It took me a little while, but it needed to happen. We’ve been in our new home for just under two weeks, it’s summertime, I need a hair cut. I’ve been keeping my eye out for hair cutters in our new neighborhood. I looked up area hair stylists…

2014-08-06 A plane was shot down over the Ukraine, but I didn’t blog about it because, what after all is there to say about the fact that hundreds of people were killed by a missile that was really only intended to kill a few people? “People are not only brutal, they are also stupid” is…

2014-08-14 When a toaster keeps producing burnt toast, we don’t blame the bread—we fix the toaster.  When a dishwasher won’t wash the dishes, we don’t blame the dishes—we fix the dishwasher. Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Ezell Ford (a young man in L.A. yesterday).  All African-American.  All unarmed.  And all dead.  The drum beat…

2014-06-23 Here’s the challenge: how to sum up a book which is about how faith communities can “bring young adults back” without carrying forward the assumption or premise on which the book begins — that that is a primary concern to our faith communities, how to “bring young people back?” That that should be what…

2014-05-26 DAY SEVEN