A contemplative life is not as we might imagine it—dull with nothing to do but ponder and reflect. What the word contemplative usually conjures up for us is someone, probably a cloistered monk or nun—who has nothing to do all day long except think about God. There actually are contemplative orders of religious people that […]

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be in this world, but not of the world.[John 17:14-19] And I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what that would mean to you or me. First, let’s talk about what it doesn’t mean: 1. What it is not about is us being above […]

As we in the Christian church regroup in an era where the church has lost much of its authority in our country, I think we need to look deeply within for why we have turned so many people off in the last forty years. From the scandals of the Catholic priests to the Protestant politicians […]

Recently I received an interfaith calendar of holy days for April from the hospital chaplaincy board I was apart of in Charlotte. It started me thinking that maybe everyday is a holy day in some religion. And then by extension, what if we considered everyday, a holy day? Not just the Sabbath. And every step […]

The kingdom is real and present in our lives, if we will rest in God; it is, in a way, a parallel universe to our “real” world; it operates under the rule of love; it is ever forming a true community where everyone is welcome; it is the world where the Holy Spirit reigns in […]

Don’t wait a single minute for another man or woman or even helpless child, for Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit, or for some miracle, BE THE MIRACLE YOURSELF! Be at peace, be loving! Now! Don’t wait another minute. Be peace, be love now. There is no time to waste, no one else to depend […]

If we are to live in the flow of love, then we have to, first of all, allow love to flow into ourselves. I think the real message of the 2nd of the Two Great Commandments of Jesus, to love your neighbor as yourself, is this: it’s only to the extent that we can allow […]

There are activist churches and spiritual churches, activist Christians and spiritual Christians, activist sometimes to the exclusion of the spiritual or spiritual to the exclusion of any action. I think we misunderstand faith when we specialize in one or the other. Faith is belief in action. Faith is a dynamic state which seeks to include, […]

I only know what I have lived. Anything else, beliefs, creeds, thoughts, proposals, talk– is just talk. If I haven’t lived it, it’s just theory. Theory is just a way of positing what I think is true, but until I really test it out in the laboratory of my life, it remains a theory, something […]