Among the Kung of the Kalahari Desert, when a baby is born, the newborn is passed around the circle of women who attend the birth and each woman suckles the child for a moment, whether or not they are lactating, before the placenta is birthed, after which the baby is returned to her mother. As […]

It was a rainy day in April many years ago. About one hundred people were crammed into a tent deep in the woods. They had come to grieve the loss of a young couple’s first child. Olivia Rose was her name. She lived exactly 4 days, 3 hours and six minutes, before dying of viral […]

CLICK HERE for video of this sermon “Carmel Point” by Robinson Jeffers The extraordinary patience of things! This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses— How beautiful when we first beheld it, Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing, Or a few […]

As a boy growing up I used to imagine a world in which all the other people in it simply vanished. Their cars were still running, the power plants still humming and music still playing, all without another soul on the planet. All alone I dreamed that I would have whatever I needed, food before […]

CLICK HERE for video of this sermon At age 30 he had a vision. It was time to leave home, to wander in the wilderness in search of answers to life’s greatest mystery. Why are we here? Is there a God? Why must life end? For many years he wandered trying different spiritual practices until […]

CLICK HERE for video of this sermon I first heard of Steve Lopez during my early days in California. Steve is one of the LA Times most prolific and profound columnists and I followed him religiously. We were living in LA when Steve met Nathaniel Ayers, a brilliant Julliard trained violinist whose career had been […]

CLICK HERE for video of this sermon I have played the lottery for many years. I always play the same numbers, my kid’s birthdates, even though the experts tell me that is the wrong way to play. Actually, the experts, those who I ought to be listening to, tell me that the lottery is hopelessly […]

I have used the phrase Grace and Grit often in my writings. I originally borrowed the term from a book title by the transpersonal philosopher Ken Wilber who married Treya Killiam in 1983. Ten days after they were married she was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. The book tells the harrowing account of her […]

CLICK HERE for video of this sermon On Dec. 1, 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white man riding the Montgomery AL city bus, a sea change occurred. It was not the first time an African American had refused to give up their seat on the bus. It had […]