Rev. Frank Hall Services Archive

  This is my annual every-member-and-friend sermon about money. It’s not that I’m reluctant to talk about money – to talk about how the church depends on the generosity of its members and friends to continue to exist. I’m not reluctant, but I am careful. Appeals for money can make you want to change the […]

“Listening to people I could enter into their lives, walk with my feet in their shoes; their desires, their needs, all passed into my soul, or my soul passed into theirs.” Balzac 1799 – 1850 Something happens ‘between the pulpit and the pew,’ between you and me, in this setting…when ‘it works.’ What is that […]

Sponsored by our Rainbow Task Force (Welcoming Congregation) First, my thanks to the members of the Rainbow Task Force and its predecessor, the Welcoming Congregation Committee. You have made and are making a significant contribution toward our shared goal of justice and respect for those in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. You have […]

Opening Reading: Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand; Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from […]

I want to speak about my personal attraction to what I understand to be the Buddha’s way – as a way of life and a way of religious expression — the development of spirituality without institutional religion…without the need for dogma, creeds or theological belief systems. I’m not talking about the wide variety of ways […]

Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain scientist – a neuroanatomist — she knows the territory! She knows that the brain is divided into two halves, also called hemispheres, – the right brain and the left brain. She knows that each hemisphere, and various places within each hemisphere, is assigned very specific and particular tasks, each […]

Opening Words: from the Sufi-Muslim poet, Rumi Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing There is a field I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass The world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ Doesn’t make any sense. This is our field where we […]

Opening Words: Martin Luther King, Jr wrote about the parable of the Good Samaritan.  He said, “The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, […]

Introductory Reading: Yesterday, January 8, 2011, New York Times op-ed columnist Charles M. Blow wrote: “Years ago, my oldest son told me that he thought those in our small Baptist church had all been brainwashed. How else could they believe in the unbelievable? At the time, I was shocked. “He later softened that position. Although […]

Opening Words: Lucille Clifton was a great poet – I had the privilege of listening to her at Chautauqua a few years ago – she died last February at age 73. Lucille Clifton, I Am Running into a New Year i am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a […]