I am a conservative liberal and a liberal conservative in my approach to life and religion. I am a liberal, mainline Protestant who is able to entertain new scholarship and thinking about Jesus Christ and religion and the church, but I am conservative in my liberalism(no longer the knee-jerk liberal a friend once labeled me) […]

I don’t need to tell you that our lives today are crazy with busyness: we have to-do lists that are endless and jobs that we carry with us through pda’s and i-pads on the weekends and even on vacations. Even stay-at-home parents feel pressured into taking on more and more activities for their kids, so […]

In the documentary, ”Face to Face with Carl Jung” Part 1,[1] the pioneering Swiss psychiatrist, was asked if he believed in God. Then eighty-four he answered, “That is difficult to answer…I know… I don’t need to believe.” How many of us can say that I know God? I would guess that many would say we […]

There are many paths into the Life of the Spirit: through Bible study and focus on God, through meditation or prayer,  to name a few, but to me one of the most powerful is gratitude. Gratitude is an acknowledgement of all we’ve been given by God: LIFE ITSELF! which is an incredible gift, talents and […]

We have closed out the year 2010, a year of uncertainty and a small economic recovery; we enter 2011 with many questions about how our lives will be in the unknown and untested year ahead. Since the economic crash of 2008, we’ve lived with more uncertainty than in the previous 50 years. So often during […]

Last week I wrote about God being the director and us,  the actors on the stage of life.  I was not talking about God the puppeteer and us the puppets. The relationship between us and God when we have surrendered our lives  is like how the director and actors work together  in a stage play: […]

When we talk about loving God, being human means that we are never totally, 100% in the relationship. We dance close to the Father or to Christ and we pull away. Again and again we dance closer and we pull away. From our point of view we either experience God as being close to us […]

Just when I think I’ve seen every different cardinal possible another appears. This one is probably a female, but her coloring is mostly grey, not the variations on a brown theme that I am used to seeing. Grey head, grey body with a fair dusting of red along the lower wings and tail feathers. She […]

As my friend’s condition deteriorates, I am more and more at a loss for what to do or say when I am with her. She is now wheel-chair bound and unable to speak except to repeat an occasional word that someone else has just uttered. At the age of 68 she has a frontal lobe […]

Very early in the morning or very late at night, when there is no traffic noise and for some reason I am awake, I can hear the train whistle from far away. It sounds to me like a call to wander, to see new places, and something within me trembles a little at the thought. […]