We are learning to regroup and remember perfection was never the point.

Thresholds. We cross them every day. From room to room, from outside to inside, and back again, from here to there, from anywhere to everywhere, from age to age. Each threshold offers an opportunity for change, for renewal, for transformation, from what we were and what we are to what we can be....

Advent is about expectation—radical expectations that undo the status quo—and anticipation: a skillful search for the places where liberation rises from the ashes.

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...

For all the talk about reason and science, Humanism is really about a passionate love affair. It is a love affair with life, not a mythical hereafter. Humanism is a love affair with a progressive vision of civilization in which each of us can add to our growing library of wisdom, our evolving...

The road that lies ahead of us is a long one, and the pace of progress will sometimes feel glacially slow. Never forget that glaciers over time can carve out grand canyons and great lakes. Moving tectonic plates can rise up mountains over millennia, or they can explode awe-inspiring volcanoes in...

All summer, workers have been building a brick wall along the road by my neighborhood. Against the brutal heat, they stretch a tarp overhead to get a little shade. I’ve watched them take bricks in their dusty brown hands one by one, butter them thickly with mortar, line them up, and tap them...

Headlights, taillights, going, coming; it does not matter inside. Draw a curtain across the window, lock the door and break the key. Let the interior deepen and broaden until it exceeds this ­little room. You will go out when you are ready, when the tiny inner Self no longer fits. Awareness will...

In the ­struggles we choose for ourselves, in the ways we move forward in our lives and bring our world forward with us, It is right to remember the names of those who gave us strength in this choice of living. It is right to name the power of hard lives well-lived. We share a history with those...

The road of history is long, full of both hope and disappointment. In times past, there have been wars and rumors of wars, violence and exploitation, hunger and homelessness, and destruction of this earth, your creation....

I am one of those people who love to make New Year’s resolutions. Why not create a vital, remodeled persona, new and improved? Just write down all the things you want to accomplish, all the projects you want to complete, all the character improvements you want to make, and all the skills you want...

Blessed is the path on which you travel. Blessed is the body that carries you upon it. Blessed is your heart that has heard the call. Blessed is your mind that discerns the way. Blessed is the gift that you will receive by going. Truly blessed is the gift that you will become on the journey....

“Personal Spiritual Trainers” excerpted from Nathan C. Walker (2014) Exorcising Preaching: Crafting Intellectually Honest Worship. St. Louis: Chalice Press. When you come to me, come not with the expectation to have some passive clergyperson coddle you into complacency. No. Come to me as your...

The following can be read by one leader, read by several leaders, or read responsively between leader(s) and the congregation. Blessed are you who can question your own assumptions and listen with an open mind; you will receive new insights beyond your imagining. Blessed are you who suffer the...

Many of the past generation and many of today have found three abiding values in prayer: the quiet meditation on life, the reaching out toward the universal and the infinite, and the courageous facing of one's profoundest wishes....