December 4, 2016
As a human community and as a liberal religious community we should rightfully celebrate the presence of joy, hope, peace, and love in our midst; and seek to extend the blessings of each and all of these things in whatever ways are available to us. In doing so we will honor the many meanings of these Blessed and Holy Days.
November 20, 2016
For me, what’s good today is that I’m here; here with you in a setting with people whose values and principles I share. What’s good today is that I am called to keep faith with you, even as we—each and every one of us here—are called to keep faith with one another.
November 6, 2016
…our political processes—at any number of levels—offer an opportunity for citizens to bring their highest principles and values to the public, civic arena. … it’s important, even crucial, that this ideal be held up … as a reminder of what responsible and dedicated and caring citizenry means and requires.
October 23, 2016
THAT—I would submit—is the real God question. It’s not about whether or not there is a Supreme Being who knows who we are and can catch us in our misdeeds—like, say, swiping fudge. It’s about whether or not there is any Greater Meaning to our lives that both encompasses and lies beyond the earthly meanings we cultivate and nurture for ourselves.
October 16, 2016
Prayer, as I have come to see it, is an attempt to touch what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the “spark of the Divine” that is in all of us, and to sense the presence of the Sacred that lies beyond us as well. It is part of our human condition to reach both within and beyond ourselves when it comes to finding true meaning in our lives, when it comes to finding what is Really Real for us, when it comes to discovering what it is that ultimately sustains us and makes us whole persons.
October 2, 2016
Religious communities, whatever their orientation and however liberal or conservative they may be, are also human communities. As such they contain within them the best that is in men, women, and children; as well as our human foibles, shortcomings, and failings. These are the lives we bring to the religious communities to which we belong, as we seek greater wholeness, seek greater levels of relationship, and sometimes seek the forgiveness and the reconciliation we need to get to those levels.
September 25, 2016
I think we need ways of saying to the larger communities in which our congregations are located that we offer a way of being religious in the best and most basic sense of the word. We offer a place where you can grow a soul, where you can in the company of other seekers, search and find what it is that finally and most meaningfully binds your life together and gives you a sense of wholeness.
September 18, 2016
“When I see the faces of the people at my church I can always find my way home.” Granted, a church or a house of worship however named is not a place to hide out from the world. But it is a place to bring your spirit for renewal and recommitment, so that you can then re-engage with the world. And wherever one’s heart finds renewal, wherever one finds a newness of life—that indeed is a holy place.
August 7, 2016
A vision that persons of all stations in life—stations of race and class and belief—can each and all be a part of a sustaining mosaic that will allow us to continue to meaningfully live on this pale blue dot.