I’ve been thinking about the first sermon I delivered from this pulpit. It was our introduction to one another, at the beginning of candidating week, March 25, 1984. Candidating week involves two sermons; one at the start of the week, and one at the other end, after meeting with committees and as many people as […]

 When I was in graduate school I had a course in Social Foundations of Education, and was assigned to write a paper and give an oral report on the basics of Buddhism. That was 35 years ago. At the end of my comments to the class I said, “I think I’m a Buddhist.” I’ve never […]

Reading: The Madman; Kahlil Gibran “You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen, the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives. I ran maskless through the streets shouting, […]

 Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went to school with guns and bombs and a plan to kill as many kids as they could. Their killing spree ended with 15 dead and dozens wounded. We were witnesses to this horrendous event. A witness is one who has a firsthand account-one who is present and takes note […]

Where is the School of the Americas and what is its purpose, and why talk about it from this pulpit? Let me answer the last question first: why talk about a military training camp from a pulpit? Isn’t this about politics, and shouldn’t we keep politics and religion or ‘spirituality’ separate? I’ve taken this question […]

A GOOD MAN In the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy’s little dog Todo pulls open the screen behind which the so-called Wizard is pulling the levers to razzle dazzle them, Dorothy says in disgust, “Oh, you’re a very bad man.” To which the Wizard replies, “No, I’m a good man. I’m just a bad Wizard!” […]

OPENING WORDS “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 ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! Great God! I’d rather be A pagan suckled in a creed outworn, So might I, standing on this […]

We human beings are flawed. Imperfect. Theologians, struggling to explain how a perfect God could create an imperfect creature ‘in his own image,’ came up with the interesting idea of ‘original sin.’ Adam, they said, was disobedient. God put him in paradise–a perfect world, where he could, according to the theologians, live forever; as long […]

I am not a big baseball fan. The word fan is the short of the word fanatic. A fan is a patron, a partisan, an aficionado. “A person markedor motivated by an extreme, unreasoning enthusiasm, as for a cause.” Churchill said: “A fanatic is someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” […]