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July 2014

July 24, 2014

House on Fire: Church Attendance in the US

There it is, yet another study indicating that the number of American Christians who attend...

July 22, 2014

Circle Round for Freedom

The opposite of liberal religion is not conservative religion. It is fundamentalism – the deep...

July 17, 2014

Martian Sleeper Cells and A-Model Tism

Since I’m both a minister and a humanist, I’m asked—often in rather shocked terms—if I...

July 10, 2014

Eleanor Rigby’s Selfie

We learned from the Beatles that Eleanor Rigby “keeps her face in a jar by...

July 08, 2014

Keep the Faith

This morning I tended to my garden and that of an elder neighbor....

July 03, 2014

Way to Go, Supreme Court: Another #facepalm

A Primo #Facepalm Moment To be a citizen of the United States is to experience...

June 2014

June 26, 2014

Roadmaps for the Soul (or: Hunting, Gathering, Singing)

In “Tombstone Blues,” a song released in 1965, Bob Dylan sang, “The National Bank at...

June 19, 2014

Making Sense of Life (or: Three Decorating Ideas for the Mind)

Wallace Stevens once said, “How full of trifles everything is! It is only one’s thoughts...

June 12, 2014

The Proof’s in the Pudding (or What’s Churchy about Church?)

Imagine I’m sometimes asked how humanists can have “church” without invoking god. Here’s how I...

June 05, 2014

#Development—It’s Nothing Personal

Pragmatic philosopher John Dewey once said, “Growth itself is the only moral end.” To philosophers...

May 2014

May 29, 2014

Spiritual But Not . . . Keep Talking

Literary critic Terry Eagleton said, “The din of conversation is as much meaning as we...

May 22, 2014

Tinfoil Hats and the Examined Life

Let’s say I tell you I’m wearing a tinfoil hat today . . . What...

May 08, 2014

Salvation Hits the Couch

Buddhism had been known in the United States since the mid-Nineteenth Century, but really came...

May 01, 2014

Carrots, Sticks, Paddles, and Autopilot

Buddhist wisdom says there are three ways we naturally approach anything—desire, aversion, or indifference. For...

April 2014

April 17, 2014

Pagans, Cheasters, and Nones: Easter and Open-Source Religion

This coming Easter morning, many people will rise and look east. Some will go to...

April 10, 2014

Let’s Agree to Agree on Subjectivity

There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an...

April 03, 2014

A Semi-Private Idaho and Life in the Goldilocks Zone

Living in your own private Idaho underground like a wild potato The B52s You’ve...

March 2014

March 27, 2014

Seriously—Who Said We Can Choose Our Own Mysteries?

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. ~Oscar Wilde There...

March 20, 2014

Fallen Angels, Rising Apes, and the Knowledge of the Serpent

I. In addition to the Unitarian Universalist Seven Principles, the congregation that I serve as...

March 18, 2014

Do Justice

I am ever so grateful that I was assigned The Wolf Shall Dwell with the...

March 13, 2014

Sin Isn’t Very Original: Dostoyevsky and the Freedom to Really Mess Things Up

I have a terrible confession: almost all of the calories I consume in a day,...

February 2014

February 27, 2014

Of Time and the Nebulous

Someday, they say, stars will stop gelling—the hydrogen and helium gone. Someday, each...

February 20, 2014

How Unitarian Universalists Do Church

I suppose everybody has a favorite founding document for a religion or a nation. Mine...

February 13, 2014

Spiritual Practice for Skeptics

I tend to get it from both sides when I talk about spiritual practice: many...

February 10, 2014

The Harvest Comes

On a blazingly sunny January morning, I marched into a sanctuary outside of Denver, Colorado...

February 06, 2014

Apocalypse Never (and what we can do about it)

I grew up in the Pentecostal church. When I was ten, I knew just how...

January 2014

January 30, 2014

A Scream and a Theory: Natural Selection and the Higher Moral Order

Scientific theories do not occur in a vacuum. Like poems or paintings, theories reflect the...

January 26, 2014

Worthy to be Entrusted

(Today, I preached at the ordination of a new minister in my denomination, Unitarian Universalism....

January 21, 2014

Epiphany (Continues)

[More king cakes than you can imagine and only two weeks into Epiphany, I am...

January 16, 2014

A Gift, A Letter, and a Drowning Man: The Legacy of “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

There’s an old Zen story that does like this: Once there was a great...