As the leaves continue to fall from the trees, as the days continue to grow colder and shorter, as nature (at least in this part of the world) prepares to go to sleep, this is usually a winding down season; a time to stay home, snuggle up, and sleep. But Advent is right around the corner. As a…

I bought two books last week. The first was a book of prayers—a book of tiny prayers to be exact. Micah Bucey is minister and spiritual leader in New York City. When the city went into lockdown in March 2020, Bucey began a daily practice of writing a tiny prayer each morning. After a year, Bucey…

We commune with those who’ve gone before us Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside everything that impedes us and the sin that so easily entangles us. Let us run with perseverance the race laid out for us. Let us not lose sight of Jesus, who…

While the crisis in Afghan may have fallen out of the daily news cycle, the story is far from over for many families still struggling to find some sense of safety and stability while trying to navigate an already overloaded system. As we continue to discern how best to help and support our Afghan brothers and sisters, I thought…

On Sunday you might have noticed the new sidewalk leading up to the main doors of the sanctuary. This is part of the larger restoration project that will include new doors in the near future. A big thanks goes to Bill Kirkman and the rest of the Property and Finance team for working so hard…

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to sell all your stuff then pack your clothes and go live in a foreign country? Just because God told you too! God asks people to do some ridiculously uncomfortable things. Let’s see, God asked Noah to build a stupendously BIG Ark, God asked Jonah to prophesy…

On Sunday, I mentioned a growing movement in Japan called “future visionary design.” This planning process asks residents to imagine themselves as residents of their town or city sixty years in the future and draw up plans for their city with that mindset. The plans produced by groups that engaged in this future visionary design process…

In Thirst: Poems by Mary Oliver, we find one of Oliver’s most well-known poems—a reflection on prayer. As always, she has a way of capturing the truth in such a succinct and beautiful way. It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay…

Above is a link to the video that was our Musical Meditation on Sunday. I came across this song several weeks ago when the great poet and essayist Parker Palmer posted it to promote Carrie Newcomer’s new album Until Now, that comes out today. According to her website, this album “explores the process of unraveling…

Coming from a blue collar family, I know outsourcing can be a bad word when it means the loss of American jobs to other countries with unjust labor costs. That’s not how I’m using here. At its most basic level, outsourcing is about shifting the responsibility of some part of a process from one entity to another.…