From Your Minister
Podcast: Download (6.5MB)
Subscribe: More
What, I ask myself, does it take to live in at-one-ment? I can imagine the road I need to travel from where I am now to a place of living in at-one-ment with myself, with my friends and family, with my neighbors, with the world…
And then the spots where I need to turn toward some different course of action or practice tell me what atonement looks like in my life right now.
REsources for Living
Podcast: Download (4.9MB)
Subscribe: More
Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, many be the source of one of the most…um…surprising religious traditions I know of. Surprising, as in a nice way of saying downright strange. Although only a few Orthodox Jews do it any more, it is traditional on Yom Kippur to do kapporot.
And what is kapporot, you might well ask? Well, basically it’s swinging a live chicken around over your head.
Pillar of Salt (Excerpt)
Podcast: Download (682.0KB)
Subscribe: More
…Speak out the paralyzing secret
and begin to come back to yourself. Read more →
Joy
Podcast: Download (11.8MB)
Subscribe: More
I once traveled to a conference for Unitarian Universalist ministers that was held in Ottawa. For various reasons I decided to take the train. That meant leaving early and arriving in Ottawa sometime around 10:00 p.m. It was a long day. Read more →
Rational Exuberance
Podcast: Download (14.2MB)
Subscribe: More
When I started my training for spiritual direction, I figured that it would involve a lot of reading the classics of spirituality—all those Desert Fathers and Mothers and Saints—and a lot of sitting still, contemplating God’s emptiness or something. I may have also thought it would be a pretty serious business. Well, it was a pretty serious business. But it was not at all solemn.
Happy Bird
Happiness
The Great Surmise
From Your Minister
Podcast: Download (6.1MB)
Subscribe: More
As I began my monthly rituals of circling around writing my Quest column—rituals which generally include brooding, conversations, naps, internet searches, leafing through poetry books, walking the dogs, cleaning the kitchen, reading friends’ updates on Facebook, casting about in my mind for something wise I read or heard long ago that I can share—rituals of circling similar to my dogs’ as they prepare to lie down, following some cellular memory for creating a nesting spot—as I did all of this, something shocking emerged in my awareness: I have never preached or written, explicitly, about joy!
REsources for Living
Podcast: Download (3.7MB)
Subscribe: More
I figured that in exploring the topic of joy it would be good to ask an expert for some input. So I decided to interview my dog, Piper, who is pretty much the most ridiculously joyful being I have ever encountered. We say of Piper that her emotions run the gamut from cheerful to ecstatic (with exceptions for baths and/or our other dog getting treats which “rightfully” belong to her).
