Category Archives: Faith & Witness

Dove flying in Lisbon, Portugal

Self-Inflicted Terrorism

The dictionary definition of “terrorize” is “to fill with fear or anxiety: to scare;” “to coerce by threat or violence.” Homophobia is the product of spiritual and religious terrorism. GLBT people are subjected to continuous terrorist assaults, by which established abusive religions seek to undermine

Sunlight shining through leaf

Purchasing Bewilderment

Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment; Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition. — Rumi God is bipolar. Rev. Dr. J. Henry Jurgens, a practicing psychiatrist and doctor of divinity at Yale University Divinity School, has diagnosed God almighty as suffering from the disorder that afflicts

Stained glass window image of Jesus

A Parable Jesus Would Like

It would be easy to toss off some glib, superficial answer to the question of how we may know the God beyond our limited stereotypes — in the words of Paul Tillich, the “God beyond God.” But this would provide no real insight into solving

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Through a Glass Darkly

A friend called me recently with some concerns about spirituality. Knowing that although I have a somewhat unorthodox view and life that I am still a very spiritual person and a Christian, he approached me about God: how could he develop a relationship with God

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Seven Wonders of the World

A friend recently sent me an article about a group of students that was asked to list what they thought were the present “Seven Wonders of the World.” There was some disagreement, but the majority results were fairly predictable: Egypt’s Great Pyramids, the Grand Canyon,

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What Is… May Be for Good Reasons!

I still remember how thunderstruck I was when it first dawned on me that things just may be the way they are for very good reasons. This insight was a long time coming to me! I now see that this insight actually affirms faith, or

Dove flying in Lisbon, Portugal

Theology Matters

Jesus has been getting a lot of press lately, thanks to Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ.” That is one good thing that has come from this controversial movie. The secular press has woken up to the fact that America is a very

Dove flying in Lisbon, Portugal

Rediscovering Christ in Old Summer Traditions

Nature is abuzz with activity in the summer months. Animals and plants flourish in their life-giving activity, while we, oftentimes, flourish in our streaming from one activity to the next. Though summer is filled with life it is the season of “in between” for Christians.

Dove flying in Lisbon, Portugal

Solar Prayer

To me, healing comes in the form of restoring connections. Death happens when you become separate from the world of life. I believe that death, like life, is only temporary. To be resurrected, you have to find a way back. You have to find a

Dove flying in Lisbon, Portugal

Rose and Butterfly: A Love Story

I Beginnings Tall, blond, blue-eyed Emmet, a just-hired, fresh-off-the-plane techno-nerd, meets debonair waiter Philip, a wirey mix of Spanish, African-American and Irish ancestors, a human ratdog with a mustache and the panache of Barishnikov. They settle into a three-bedroom apartment in Sunnyvale. At an employee