I offer my "Ouch" with hope and trust.

I was talking with God the other day, ‘cause we’re cool like that. And God said “Hey, I want you to tell people something.” And I was kinda busy, so I pretended like I didn't hear. And God poked me and said, “I’m not kidding. Pay attention,” (‘cause while we’re cool, we aren’t...

Give voice to sorrow and fear — the wracking sobs at family betraying family the shock at the chasm separating neighbors “What will you do in the days ahead?” one asked. “Hide in an attic,” another replied, her eyes as wide and dark as Anne Frank’s. Already the assaults on bodies have...

There is a glow far off in the distance, a light to which no path leads. We know that each time we help another or join with them to heal the world, each time we stand up for justice and what is right, each time we work and hope and love against all odds, a spark is created that adds to the...

I got out of bed this morning because of all those who had to get out of bed before me: Martin and Coretta, the day after his home was bombed. (What did they tell the children?) My father, every day of his young life in Lowndes County, Alabama....

People ask me sometimes, “Is this a gay church?” It is a privilege to answer: “Ours is absolutely, gladly, hopefully and humbly, gaily, a gay church, a gay tradition, where everyone, including heterosexual members and friends, is welcome, where everyone is needed, where everyone’s experience...

On a spring day in Farmington, Maine, as I was walking downtown, I made my way through a line of cars that were waiting for the light. In front of me was a large Confederate flag flying from the back of a white pick-up. I crossed the street, not looking at who was driving the truck, and went into...

When I was a child, I would stand and gaze at the starry firmament and contemplate infinity. As I stood there, the boundary that is time dissolved; I expanded my Spirit to fill the boundary that is space. My being stilled and all fear, anxiety, and anguish disappeared....

Blackmail, blacklist, black mark. Black Monday, black mood, black-hearted. Black plague, black mass, black market. Good guys wear white, bad guys wear black. We fear black cats, and the Dark Continent. But it’s okay to tell a white lie, lily-white hands are coveted, it’s great to be pure as the...

Be ­gentle with another— It is a cry from the lives of ­people battered By thoughtless words and brutal deeds; It comes from the lips of those who speak them, And the lives of those who do them. Who of us can look inside another and know what is there Of hope and hurt, or promise and pain? Who...

Holy and Creative Light, teach us to love this earth, our home. Together we live in one small house, even though to us it seems so large, with so many rooms. This quiet star, marbled blue and white, was hanging here and spinning in black space long before we came....

God of all oppressed persons, remind us of your presence in voices of protest; shatter our self-complacent faith in liberty freely given; and remind us of the cost of hard-won freedom. Let the pain of strangled dreams return us to a knowledge of our own triumphs in the struggle to be free....

To rise, to rise each morning with the faint glow of starlight on our backs as we head into the joys, the surprises, the challenges of each day sometimes with awe and wonder, perhaps expectation, perhaps dread… To rise, to rise each day peering over waterlines, sandbags, walls, garbage, bunkers…...

Innocence does not die at once, in that first raptured thrust. It dies in each small seduction, in every subsequent acquiescence....