The Pulpiteer

This is the third of a three part sermon series based on the benediction. May you find: Questions more Profound than Answers, Vulnerability more Powerful than Strength, and a Peace that Passeth All Understanding.  Is it a peace that is available to us? Even in the midst of the suffering of others? Even in the midst of our own suffering? Is it the answer to suffering, or the antidote, or the cure,...

This is the second of a three part sermon series based on the benediction. May you find: Questions more Profound than Answers, Vulnerability more Powerful than Strength, and a Peace that Passeth All Understanding. And here’s how we’re going to honor it: We tried it scripted, we tackled ‘questions more profound that answers’, now it’s time to go one layer deeper, It’s time for ‘vulnerability more p...

This is the first of a three part sermon series based on the benediction. May you find: Questions more Profound than Answers, Vulnerability more Powerful than Strength, and a Peace that Passeth All Understanding. And here's how we're going to honor it: You Ask, I answer... well, probably more like ponder, speculate, ruminate, you get the idea.

A good covenant is easy to write and hard to practice. What can we do to better live the promises we've already made? How can we honor the spirit of a promise when its literal interpretation shifts from hard to impossible? If a promise can't be kept literally, is it worthless? What do we really owe each other anyway? These questions and more as our struggle continues.

We can't interrupt the transmission of intergenerational trauma without asking deep questions. In the research on play, on imagination, on unconditional love - we begin to see the shape of some similarly deep answers. But can we do the work? Can we relinquish our expectations of conformity and compliance in favor of a world made more chaotic by human expression released from traditional fetter...

In a sequence of five stories from three authors, we'll attempt to find a path through the forest of judgement, into the clearing of showing up for each other, and on to a seemingly mythical land of transcendent connection. Join us won't you? Thanks and acknowledgement to our three authors: Eckhart Tolle, Stephen Jenkinson, and Charles Eisenstein.

 I’m not asking if such a future is possible or plausible or what changes have to happen to bring it about. I’m asking a question about the present, a question about our own social and mental and emotional and spiritual state — I’m asking if we can, through the lens of our imagination, see such a place from here.

Could it be that the best thing about democracy is the part of it that we do the worst? After all, if you look back at the history of the idea, it only really had one serious precondition. A precondition that this country stopped taking seriously as soon as it extended the franchise. Could more attention to this one prerequisite be the linchpin for healing our ailing democratic institutions and cu...

I’ve long struggled to find an MLK Day tradition that I feel does adequate justice to his life and message as a modern day prophet. So, for the first installment in what I hope will become a long standing practice, we will use Dr. King’s spotlight to highlight the message of a lesser known but sympathetically aligned fellow prophet… one whose life was also cut short by intentional violence, dare w...

Who are our dead? Are they a subset of ‘the dead’? Are they a going concern, or just a past with whose echo we must contend? Are there obligations that linger between us, the living, and them, the dead? Do those obligations flow in two directions, or in one? Do these answers inform our approach to our own deaths, or the deaths of those we love? What role does memory, after which this Memorial holi...

This episode is an homage to Easter, which I read as an invitation to struggle with one of the deepest areas of mystery: life, death, & rebirth. I want to share with you some writings from one of my most influential teachers, Stephen Jenkinson. He is author of books like “Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul” & “Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble.” What if the te...

Mother's Day started as a Peace Movement, but what has it become? Between it's lost peace roots and our fraught relationship with gender-roles, can we find a meaningful space for celebration? for gratitude? for hard-earned lessons? Well, we're going to try. With a little bit of that exoteric vs. esoteric discernment that we started exploring last month, and a smidge of gratitude for th...

In episode two of The Pulpiteer, we'll struggle with Jesus' core prophetic teaching of the transformative power of love. We'll use two contemporaries, Marshall Rosenberg and Alfie Kohn, to help us bring this wisdom into focus and to ask some hard questions.

In this first episode of the Pulpiteer Podcast, we'll tackle this question: What is Church For? Is it a social club? Or a general purpose social justice non-profit? Is it an entertainment? A show? A musical performance? A Sunday morning day-care respite? Is it a lecture? A ceremony? A ritual? A backstage pass to the preferred afterlife? (revised version October 2024, intro music included)