Some beliefs are like walled gardens. They encourage exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged. Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies. Some beliefs are like shadows, clouding children's days and fears of unknown calamities. Other beliefs...

To worship God is nothing other than to serve the people. It does not need rosaries, prayer carpets, or robes. All peoples are members of the same body, created from one essence. If fate brings suffering to one member The others cannot stay at rest.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted....

The more we try to say precisely what is in our hearts, the more we find that we are speaking for multitudes of strangers the world over. The deeper we get down to our own fundamentals, the more deeply we represent those of other people. Like all human beings, I live on borrowed time....

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out for another is to risk exposing our true self. To place our ideals—our dreams—before the crowd is to risk loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk despair. To try is to...

I grew up on my family farm in the southern part of Illinois. There was nothing about it that was a golden age. And I’m NOT nostalgic about the good old days. I don’t like carrying water from the well out back. I don’t like going to an outhouse at 4 a.m. in the snow. I don’t like the wasps...

I remember back to the 50’s and 60’s when, once a week, my mother would don her shirtwaist, climb into the family car, and make her way to the A&P. How did she choose her groceries then? In our family, in New England and a long way from the fertile, productive valleys of California, proximity...

On a deeper level, do we consider what we are eating and whether its origins are compatible with our personal values? Since the beginning of time, dietary practices have been incorporated into the religious practices of humanity....

Please join me now in a litany for the season. I invite you to respond with the words, “We remember. We forgive. We love.” For gifts we yearned for, but did not receive… For things we received, but never wanted… For those who offered us cheer when what we needed was comfort… For those who...

Listen! This is a noisy world. You may have heard of the story of a dispute in the student union of one university. It seems "the presence of a juke box...disrupted conversation. Conversationalists petitioned for removal of the offending machine....

Come no matter what the topic is, because your church needs you and you need your church.

I grew up as the heavily-committed eldest child of an American Baptist minister in the 50's. Committed, that is, to self-preservation, staying out of trouble with our small town and my family, and having fun within safe parameters, namely, church activities. I never felt particularly committed to...

Leader: Spring, the triumph of light over darkness, Response: Victory of newness and growth, and warmth vanquishing cold, Leader: We, too, know coldness and darkness within us, as it is in our world....

We’ve begun a new ritual around our dinner table in which each member of the family takes a minute or two to name what he or she has been grateful for. No matter how yucky our day has been, we try to offer our gratitude in the spirit of kindness and real thankfulness. Often, the ritual’s nicest...

I hate goodbyes. I hate everything about them. It bothers me that “goodbye” isn’t really what I think we most often want to say. When those I love leave me, or I leave them, goodbye isn’t what I want to say. I want to tell them that their warm hand on my cheek, which caught my desperate...

Ministry is a quality of relationship between and among human beings that beckons forth hidden possibilities; inviting people into deeper, more constant, more reverent relationship with the world and with one another; carrying forward a long heritage of hope and liberation that has dignified and...