101 Charlie Smith Drive. It’s a beautiful, sprawling ranch style home nestled among the back-roads of rural southeastern Georgia. Its 3,000 square feet of open space are inviting. Ghostly aromas of cookies, chicken dinners and midnight snacks still haunt the now still, vacant air of
Metropolitan Community Church of Columbia, S.C. Readings for Transfiguration Sunday (Last Sunday before Lent): 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2, Luke 9:28-43 When I was growing up in the Southern Baptist church, there were two words that I had never thought to put together – “church” and “calendar.”
Mom and I had an interesting conversation recently. We were discussing my penchant, from childhood, to be a contrarian. I told her that one of my favorite shirts as a kid was a sweatshirt with a big yellow arrow on it pointing off to one
Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If
Metropolitan Community Church of Columbia, S.C. Readings: 2 Samuel 11:2-5, Matthew 15:21-28, 1 Corinthians 13:9-13 I had been in seminary only a little while when my then-partner asked me a stumper of a question. “Don’t you think that’s a contradiction?” she asked me one day.
“My definition of sense of humor is creating or being able to create a space where there is none. If you’re able to create a space where there is seemingly no space it is called a sense of humor.” — Sogyal Rinpoche, Tibetan Wisdom for
And that means everyone, even those you don’t like I’ve been getting Selma Massey’s hate mail. Ever since Focus on the Family decided to run a piece on their Website about Dr. Massey’s new TV show in Detroit, serendipitously called “Whosoever,” I’ve been deluged. The
Taking back the text “If you can’t or won’t understand the Bible, others will surely interpret it for you.” This is the premise from which John Buehrens writes in his new book Understanding the Bible: An Introduction for Skeptics, Seekers, and Religious Liberals. It’s a
The faith that you have, have as your own conviction before God. Blessed are those who have no reason to condemn themselves because of what they approve. But those who have doubts are condemned if they eat, because they do not act from faith; for
“God is love! God is love! God is love!” I found myself chanting these lines over and over again at the recent Witness Our Welcome conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. But, I was not enraptured by these words during a worship service at the ecumenical conference