From now until the end of April we are in what in the Christian Calendar is known as Lent. Lent is the season in which we consider giving up something we are accustomed to in order to focus the lens of our lives on what truly matters, be it love, belonging, or the coming of […]

We had a fabulous day on Saturday as a number of us learned from one another about what strengths our congregation has to offer. The Appreciative Inquiry process is one in which we learn, grow and dream from our strengths. I was amazed at some of the dreams that came up; becoming a multicultural, multigenerational […]

I first heard of Appreciative Inquiry in Chicago in the late 1990s. I was dealing with some very thorny congregational issues as a young minister. In consulting with my mentor, I said “We have so many problems, I just don’t know where to start.” She looked at me and with a calm voice said “Don’t […]

As we embark on the spiritual theme of vulnerability in this month of March, I want to take on the question of hope. Brené Brown, who has spent her entire career studying vulnerability, points out that hope is not an emotion that we have but is, rather, “a function of struggle which we develop… hope […]

In her book The Weight of Ink, the author Rachel Kadish tells the fictionalized history of a young Jewish woman in the 1600s, Ester, who loses both of her parents in a fire in Amsterdam and is sent to work for a blind rabbi in London. Her job is to write down his thoughts and […]

Most of us think of resilience as the ability to overcome difficulties and persevere. That is true but resilience is more than that: Resilience is the ability to adapt to the change we are experiencing. Jeremy Lent in his book The Patterning Instinct puts it this way: “The resilience of a system determines whether it […]

If you have been coming to worship these last several weeks you will have noticed that there is a new energy in our midst. With the new year have come people who have found us and our new way of doing religion, creating a place where creativity and spirituality meet. We welcome all who find […]

Happy New Year! Welcome to a new year of possibilities and transformation. As I was pondering this new year, I found myself coming back time and again to the ideal of appreciation. Too often we make resolutions focused on what we want to have or be or do differently in the coming year. I think […]