In his classic book, Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez wrote of his hero: “He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to […]

Much has been made of what our leaders call “social distancing.” Social distancing is a catch-all phrase that means we should avoid areas where people congregate in large numbers: concerts, sporting events, schools and congregations like ours. Public health officials tell us that by distancing ourselves from one another for a prolonged time we can […]

In this time of political dystopia, economic chaos and a threatening pandemic, I think of the spiritual power of brokenness. There seem to be holes everywhere. It’s almost as if we have a cross between an elephant and a kangaroo running amok, a giant beast of misfortune, stomping big holes around the world. We will […]

With the spread of the Corona Virus, fear seems to be gripping our everyday lives. The stock market tumble of this past week was truly scary, especially for those who depend on their investments to live or retire on. What many experts tell me though is that this will correct once we know how big […]

Some of you were in church this past Sunday and learned more about gender identity and equity. Gender identity is the preferred expression of an individual regardless of their biological sex or sexual orientation. Those who are not binary in their identity often express themselves in a pronoun that is neither male nor female. One […]

Should We Always Take the Risk? This question was on the long list of questions the ministers were asked in November and I think this is a good time to tackle an answer. Any decision to take a risk depends on what is at stake. Generally, I live by the Yogi Berra wisdom that “if […]

How do we make sense of Suffering? The Buddha was right, all of us suffer, although not all life is suffering. Progressive faiths such as ours haven’t done a very good job reconciling suffering with our sunny view of life. As the poet Christian Wiman puts it: “Suffering is simply something to avoid thinking about […]

Why are humans here on this earth? In the midst of all of our political dysfunction, I have been considering the larger picture of why we are here on this planet at all. Given Earth’s natural tendency to extinguish most forms of life every eon or so, as a species we should be worried. Our […]