Opening Words, from William Wordsworth’s ‘The World is Too Much With Us‘, and Robert Frost’s ‘Birches.’ The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is our; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon. I’d like to get […]

THE SILENCE OF GRIEF The events of this past week are, as they say, “Of Biblical proportions.” Many stories that are a collection of legends and myths, mixed with history, come to mind. One that came to my mind is the story of Job. You know the story. Or do you? God and Satan devise […]

I’ve never actually panned for gold, but I like the metaphor. There are gold nuggets in the river and those who are panning for gold kneel at the edge of the stream and scoop up a pan full of rocks and sand. Then they swish it around, dumping out the rocks and sand, hoping to […]

“The test of a man or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.” –G. B. Shaw The Pope visited Greece this week in an attempt to heal some of the old wounds that date to the year 1204 when Crusaders from Rome sacked Constantinople. He was not well-received by the majority of Greek […]

Reading: Opening words to service A GIRL’S GARDEN, Robert Frost A neighbor of mine in the village Likes to tell how one spring When she was a girl on the farm, she did A childlike thing. One day she asked her father To give her a garden plot To plant and tend and reap herself, […]

Opening reading: Lament, by Edna St. Vincent Millay Listen, children: Your father is dead. From his old coats I’ll make you little jackets; I’ll make you little trousers From his old pants. There’ll be in his pockets Things he used to put there, Keys and pennies Covered with tobacco; Dan shall have the pennies To […]

Opening Words: Abou Ben Adhem, Leigh Hunt Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw, within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, An angel writing in a book of gold: – Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem […]

Reading: From Emerson’s Essay “Self-Reliance“ Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view… As soon as (we feel) at one with God, we will not beg. We will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer […]

During the 1940’s, before television, my brothers and I listened to the radio. We had our favorite programs, of course, one of which was The Shadow. It began: “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” And the answer came in a deep, mysterious voice, ‘The Shadow Knows!’ The radio show ran from […]

Readings John Haynes Holmes, former minister of Community Church, New York City, put it this way: But when I say ‘God,’ it is poetry and not theology. Nothing that any theologian ever wrote about God has helped me much, but everything that the poets have written about flowers, and birds, and skies, and seas, and […]