Christmas Lessons and Carols ~ God Goes Small

Dec 27, 2020   ·  

God took the time to keep making an effort with humanity. God saw that starting with small things sometimes led to bigger things. Perhaps you think that’s easy for God. But I think of those shepherds, or Joseph, or the Wise Men. None of them would probably live to even see Jesus as an adult or learn his teachings or see where his movement led, but they bowed down before something small because that’s how hope works. It’s not about evidence or outcomes, it’s about a way of life. A discipline. Anyone who has ever embarked on a discipline knows that you start small – the running shoes by the door, the alarm that wakes you for prayer, the one AA meeting you’ll go to just to mark it off your list.  More

Christmas Day

Dec 25, 2020   ·  

Our story is to be with God, or if you rather a selfless way to go through the world.  Seeking and serving Christ in ALL others.  This Christmas morning is the start.  Like my young couples being reminded that the wedding is the start of the marriage and that they will have to work to keep it alive, and creative and ongoing and generative.   Christmas morning the birth of this child, the breaking of God into the life of Humanity is the start.  WE are called people to move towards others so their lives will not have to be one of suffering we are called this morning to realize that this is the start not the fulfillment of God promise to this world and we are called to change the world, to be apart and to help as we can  so that any child born outside has a chance to grow up and be apart of this world in new and amazing ways.   More

Christmas Eve 10 Pm

Dec 24, 2020   ·  

Yet this is a story where the people are ordered around by the powers that be and yet the Shepherds who are called to announce the good news, to come and see the baby to companion this brand new family.  THEY ARE  outside the power structure.  They are immigrant and they are outsiders That is part of this story, too.  

THIS IS A STORY OF HOPE  and we hear it every year so that we can be reminded to be the part of the good of the story the people struggling the ones calling out the powers that be.   More

Do Not Be Afraid ~ Mary Accepts

Dec 20, 2020   ·  

Luke 1:26-38 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was … More

What Does It Mean to Be a Witness?

Dec 13, 2020   ·  

Mark Lays It Out For Us

Dec 06, 2020   ·  

God breaking into this world, God becoming human, and instead of the worst of all of our fears, God came as a child and a very human child. A child dependent on others to care and feed, to give comfort, to love and care for god as a child. It is an amazing story of vulnerability. Giving up power to learn something, to know more about the life of humanity. This is the beginning of the story. More

Where is our sense of wonder…can it lead to radical love?

Nov 29, 2020   ·  

Valarie Kaur is a social justice activist, lawyer, filmmaker, innovator, mother and Sikh American and I am reading her book, A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, her work is about Revolutionary love how we get to living into that love. As Raymond Williams says “Kaur provides us a book that is part memoir and part how to manual on how to practice what she describes as “revolutionary love”. She defines revolutionary love as the active decisions humans make to wonder about others, our opponents, and ourselves. This act of wonder, she says, will help make the world a better place. Failing to wonder ultimately leads to violence against people who we consider the other.”

It is in wonder that we can see past our own fears, we can reach past to see who else is other there and who can be part of our journey. More

What does Jesus have against goats? (Christ the King)

Nov 22, 2020   ·  

The parable of the goats and sheep are not just about a dollar to the homeless man, or a donation to Everyone home DC, or the Incarceration ministry or Washington Interfaith Network.  We should do all of that work.  The parable of the sheep and the goats is about changing our perception.  It is about changing our eyes, our hearts, our ears…so that we see.  In Native circles we are told we cannot see with colonizers eyes.  You can be 100% Native and still have be taught in residential schools and you have the eyes of a colonized person, so we must train ourselves to see a new.   More

Shield the Joyous

Nov 15, 2020   ·  

Last Saturday, a week ago from yesterday, the presidential election was called, finally. It had been a long week filled with anxiety, foreboding, and hope. But it followed an even longer four years of worry. A four years of many people worrying about their immigration status; their ability to marry the person they love; our ability, as a nation to deal with big issues from police reform to climate change to the daily toll of gun violence. Not that we were doing such a great job of dealing with these issues more than four years ago, but last week, it seemed space to breathe and act opened up. And there was joy. More

How do we be non-anxious?

Nov 08, 2020   ·  

I still have anxiety about a lot of things, mostly about people,……. mostly you all who I have not seen. I feel that I have a little more capacity to deal with the world as it is rather than the wild images in my own head. We have seen almost 50 million cases worldwide and the daily infection rate is again out of control. So we still have much to be cautious about.   Yet, caution is different than anxiety. Caution can keep us safe, anxiety puts us in danger and more importantly, it can be spread. More