My soul nudged me from a hiding place to confess and to seek forgiveness, and only through the grace of the Great Mystery of Life unfolding around us did I receive the blessing of journeying with a beloved, grieving friend.

We feel the season turning. The early sunset glancing through the red-tinged leaves. The newspaper arriving in the cool morning air. The flock of migrating swallows. A feeling of being on the edge of something new. These are the Days of Awe. A time to welcome a new year and a time to make the old...

We gather together on this Christmas Eve as fellow sojourners looking for light, for hope, for peace, and for love. We gather as people from many backgrounds, many faiths, many cultures, and many spiritual paths. But as we light this chalice, we gather as one body looking to the Nativity for its...

As we gather in the darkness and the light let us give thanks and witness to our chosen families who we have traveled a lifetime to find.

Voice One, Elder (with chalice): Across the generations we have carried the flame. We fought the injustice, sang the songs, spoke for truth, and built something lasting. We join in the line and we carry the flame forward. (pass chalice and mic to next speaker) Voice Two, Active Leader (with metal...

Humans make maps of stars, choosing some stars, ignoring others, to project our imaginations onto the heavens. These maps shift over time, across cultures. Names change for the same assemblage of bright points: Drinking Gourd, Big Dipper, Plough, Lost Hunters [1], Saptarishi [2]. Humans make...

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.

"We can change. People say we can’t, but we do when the stakes or the pain is high enough. And when we do, life can change."...

Let us be a faith that gathers, reaching for one another through the walls of hate others build, through the cages of ignorance and arrogance, and through the fear that burns city streets....

I trusted the woman at the pharmacy to be capable of hearing hard truth. Bless her wounded heart with its internalized misogyny. She just wants women to love and support each other. Thank you. Me too.

On my worst days, it is gravity I am most grateful for: the way the earth pulls at me from her core, yearns for me, keeps me pressed tightly against her surface. When my own core is hollowed out, when I have no more mass than a leaf dead on the branch, still this is enough for the earth to find me.

Happy new year! Happy new year for our beloved community. Happy new school year....

May all our hours together be blessed as this one has been: by open-hearted sharing, learning from one another, and making beautiful harmonies together. And may we greet everyone we encounter with the same acceptance and grateful kinship, until we meet again. Blessed be.

Who are the angry birds in my life? What are the sticks I carry in my heart so as not to be hurt again?

It's an impulse of the human self to be known fully, and that’s almost never possible unless we risk the conversations that help us see past our initial impressions.

This is a story of in-the-middle for those wondering how their story ends.

Be it real or metaphor, whatever is in your backpack, or your briefcase, or your purse that you’ve brought into this sanctuary that is weighing you down: leave it behind. Whatever you are carrying that is keeping you distracted, or caught up in shame, or guilt, or hopelessness: leave it behind....

If a friend were in my situation, I would have seen their failings as human. So why hold someone to an unforgiving standard just because that someone is me?