I love, love, love Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over).” I always have and always will. It reminds me of growing up, I love the emotion of the song, and I share his optimism for a better world. Polyphonic Spree recently covered it and did a stellar job. From
Continue reading →
This is the message I gave two weeks ago at Camas Friends Church on Mark 13:1-8. Life Transitions This past summer I found myself feeling drained, exhausted, uninspired and generally not myself. I felt like everything was slipping through my fingers, time was moving too quickly, things felt lifeless
Continue reading →O God, we thank you for this earth, our home; For the wide sky and the blessed sun, For the salt sea and the running water, For the everlasting hills And the never-resting winds, For trees and the common grass underfoot. We thank you for our senses By which we
Continue reading →Gratitude … goes beyond the “mine” and “thine” and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline.
Continue reading →
This is the message I gave on November 11, 2012. “As he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at
Continue reading →JUST God! and these are they Who minister at thine altar, God of Right! Men who their hands with prayer and blessing lay On Israel’s Ark of light! What! preach, and kidnap men? Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor? Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then Bolt
Continue reading →
This is the sermon I preached on October 28, 2012. It comes from the story of the feeding of the 5,000. Also, note that the general scope and interpretation of this sermon comes from Parker Palmer’s book The Active Life.* The Problem with Scarcity This morning I want
Continue reading →
This is the message I gave on Sunday morning October 19, 2012. You can listen to the audio version of it here. Last week we started to tackle the difficult subject of money and the church at Camas Friends. We discussed some possible ways of approaching the subject in a
Continue reading →* “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule…all the living things that creep on earth.” _Curators and Caretakers The church often uses the word “stewardship” to generalize things that have to do with resources that we share in common. We have stewards who take care
Continue reading →
A couple months back I started feeling the tug to wrestle with the topic of money in the church. As a preacher, I’ve largely avoided the topic like the plague. These are the kinds of things I nightmares about. I was a budding and impressionable young man when PTL
Continue reading →For almost a year now Quakers from 8-10 different meetings in the Northwest have been getting together once a month for a “convergent worship gathering.” We move around to different meetinghouses and enjoy a time of bible reading, silence and worship sharing. Programmed and unprogrammed Friends alike enjoy the space
Continue reading →We know the world is rich with streams Renowned in song and story, Whose music murmurs through our dreams Of human love and glory: We know that Arno’s banks are fair, And Rhine has castled shadows, And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr God singing down their meadows. But while,
Continue reading →