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December 2015

December 10, 2015

Do Your Religion a Favor: Live Up to Its Principles

I meet monthly with the Downtown Senior Clergy of Minneapolis. This week we listened to...

December 03, 2015

Fear, Hope, and Hell In A Hand Basket

I learned to type on a manual typewriter. There’s wasn’t an exclamation point (!) on...

December 01, 2015

Giving TUUesday

While many people in this country go to work and get paid, social change workers...

November 2015

November 26, 2015

Grace for the Rest of Us

Grace. Some say it before meals. Some have it for a name. Grace-ful people have...

November 24, 2015

Fear Not

“The one most frequently repeated command in the Bible is not “love your neighbor,” but...

November 23, 2015

Helping Black Lives Matter at the White Thanksgiving Table

Apparently, some people are hoping for Adele to come to their Thanksgiving dinner and soothe...

November 19, 2015

#Terrorism: Religion and Nationalism Aren’t Fixing It

Nothing like a crisis to clarify values. If the terrorist attacks in Paris have clarified...

November 17, 2015

In the Ruins

In the Ruins A man sits on the rubble— not just in the rubble,...

November 15, 2015

In the Face of Evil

So much heartbreak, so many dead, so many injured. This is what evil looks like—people...

November 11, 2015

The “Trinsics”: Where are You Coming From?

Psychologist Gordon Allport argued that there are two types of religious experience—the extrinsic and the...

November 10, 2015

People Who Have Come ALIVE!

What makes you come alive my friend? This week I grateful to bear witness to...

November 05, 2015

Congregational Humanist Liturgy: Creating a Religion-Neutral Zone

The Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi (370-287 BCE) told this story: Once three friends were discussing life....

October 2015

October 30, 2015

It’s been interesting watch the dialog about ethnic Halloween costumes go by on my Facebook...

October 29, 2015

Words, Words, and the Word Was With . . .

In his play Hamlet, Shakespeare has the character Polonius ask Hamlet, “What do you read,...

October 22, 2015

Why Does a Super-Nice Word Like “Spiritual” Make Humanists All Itchy?

Here is what Plato had to say about the body and the soul: Does not...

October 21, 2015

Things that get in the way

I often tell the story of the time my Chaplain Supervisor told me, “Deanna, I...

October 15, 2015

Death of the Curate

Art museums are currently going through a sea change, and that sea change is about...

October 08, 2015

Putting First Things First: Congregations of Philosophers

In 1931 the Humanist Unitarian minister Curtis Reese looked into his crystal ball and wrote...

September 2015

September 30, 2015

Redemption

Late last night a member of my congregation was killed. She was someone who cared...

September 24, 2015

Musing On Relevance

I meet monthly with clergy colleagues, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian of various stripes, all of...

September 17, 2015

Mansplaining, Whitesplaning, and the Power of Listening

Totally unprepared are you To face a world of men Timid and shy and scared...

September 15, 2015

In this time of intense polarization

I cannot help but to wonder:

September 10, 2015

Five Reasons to Congregate in a Congregation

Why bother joining a congregation rather than, oh, say, a bowling league? 1. To meet...

September 08, 2015

A little respite for our souls…

I need a little respite for my soul, soul, soul take a little time to...

September 03, 2015

Integrity and the Big Hole in Wholeness

You’ve heard it; you’ve thought it; perhaps you’ve even said it: “She is SO together!”...

September 01, 2015

And Still We Rise

The poet Mark Nepo writes that when “we find ourselves in an emergency at night,...

August 2015

August 27, 2015

The Duality Fallacy

The Methodist Church across the street from my church has a large lighted sign that...

August 25, 2015

As we re-member, a love note to NOLA and to life

This is a love note to my people, to friends and family and strangers who...

August 20, 2015

How Secular is “Religious”?

We don’t know how the ready access to information will ultimately change the human condition,...

August 18, 2015

In times of grief and struggle, remember, friends