Weekly Messages
How can we better follow a diverse Jesus and be an "activist" Christian? – John Pavlovitz
by John Pavlovitz Jesus told his disciples a story about sheep and shepherds; the sheep know the shepherd's voice and He referred to himself as the gate through which the sheep enter. After I first went into ministry, I was pressed with deep theological questions that...
The Enneagram – Robin Camu
We have our annual one-day seminar on the enneagram coming up (always the first Saturday after Labor Day). We'll be forming our enneagram groups the, to carry us through May. To get us ready, today Robin Camu speaks on how powerfully the enneagram, in the context of...
OK, white people. Let’s talk about Charlottesville.
What shall we do after that? How shall we practice our religion now? What does it mean to be Christian today?
Ready, Set, Forgive
This is the culmination of our series on the pathway to forgiveness. We discuss the granting forgiveness and the subsequent choice to renew or release the relationship.
Hatred Won’t Overcome Hatred – Breaking the Cycle
Forgiveness is a bedrock of the spiritual tradition tradition. If we don't take it up, who will? But, forgiveness is tough! To be actually able to do it, requires a training regimen. We must till the soil of our wounds with small-step practices. One first-step...
Finding Freedom in Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a skill that must be developed. It takes courage and strength, but when you engage in the process, you give yourself the gift of freedom – freedom from bitterness, freedom from allowing an incident continually harm you. Listen as we explore the 4-fold...
You Can’t Go From Hatred to Love
It is nearly impossible for us to go directly from hated to love. The usual path is to go from hatred to resentment while telling ourselves that we should be loving. A healthier path is from hatred to non-hatred, from non-hatred to understanding, from understanding...
Who IS the Enemy Jesus Said, "Love?"
Following on the idea last week, that the very notion of an enemy may be an illusion, we try to define clearly what makes an enemy.
Spirituality 401: Loving The Enemy (Prerequisites Required)
Loving our enemy. Was Jesus serious? We Christians generally ignore this verse because we simply cannot see our way there. We are encouraged to begin this 1000-mile journey with a single step. We enable ourselves through a process of working our circle of spiritual...
The Devastation and the Discipline of the Wilderness – Scott Bass
By Scott Bass We have a saying in our community that "It is our way to lose our way..." Losing our way is sometimes a good thing. The mystical experience is not part of most Christian's journeys these days. We don't see "the wilderness" or aimless wandering as a...
Lessons I’ve Learned from Being a Father – Chris Thomson
by Chris Thomson Fatherhood changes men as people and changes our spiritual walks.
Is Your Faith Holding on to a Rickety Cossack? – Chris Graebe
by Chris Graebe Everyone has their own story about how they got to NRCC. Everyone's wilderness journey is also a bit different, and many of us are still on that journey. Here is a bit of my own journey and what NRCC means to me.
On Adulting: Honoring our High-School Graduates
Today we honor our young adults who have completed their high school educations and listen in as they get some advice that we can all do better by heeding it.
Temporarily Out of Service
A commitment to service is one essential part of a healthy spiritual ecosystem. But service absent discernment can, at best, waste resources, at worst, cause harm. For many years the discernment was that NRCC was to focus upon building the other parts of the...
Mything the Point: Sophia and Her Daughters
The ancient myth of Sophia and her daughters illuminates a deep truth. The Way of Wisdom (Sophia) gives birth to the daughters, Faith (Fides), Hope (Spes), and Charity (Caritas). When we apply ourselves to the Way of Wisdom -- when we take up the spiritual practices,...
Fool of Love
When we tend to the inner life, the fruit we bear is Love. Modern standards might think love a fool because it bears all things kindly. It does not boast or envy or keep score. But when we know the Divine within, we become capacitated to love fully, not because others...
The Original Crowdsourcing of Biblical Proportions
This week we discuss the Jewish heroine Esther who despite her youth, sweetness, lack of wisdom and traditional power, leveraged what she knew about the spiritual journey. She helps us see how counter-cultural spiritual power really is. Esther calls her people to to...
Help Wanted: Counter Position
See what we did there!? "counter" and "counter." Same word, two meanings. Now that's big-time pun fun, people! In today's lesson, we imagine the conversation Jesus had with his disciples as he sent them to do their part healing the world. "Don’t act too magnificent,"...
Having the Christ-Mind
Folks who grew up in church have probably heard the term "the mind of Christ." (It's in the Bible.) Today's lesson suggest the term has the potential to help us out of the partisan pickle we find ourselves in as a nation. So far in this lesson, we've seen several...
A Less Wee Version of We
We've all got “sameness is safeness” instincts. They make it really hard to answer the question, "who is our neighbor?" But as we've been saying, everything is connected. A good way to imagine our connectedness is the metaphor of an ecosystem -- interconnected but...
Making the Connectedness Connection
Our brains are evolutionarily hardwired to detect difference and to fear it. This survival strategy makes it harder to see the deeper truth of our connectedness. Given that our hardwired instincts work against relating in oneness, the spiritual journey helps us. It...
The Gravity of Our Newtonian Inheritance
Five hundred years ago, Enlightenment scientists told us all things exist independently. All the social and cultural institutions we now live in, were built on instincts drawn from that basic understanding. Consequently, Western society -- and especially the US --...
No Trueness in Twoness
Science and spirituality have converged to affirm that we are all connected. Our separateness is an illusion that keeps us from living our lives in spiritual harmony with our interconnected reality. We all suffer the afflictions of living our two-ness illusion – chief...
Discerning Your Bent . . . For Lent
Since each personality has a bent, each tends toward specific fear-avoiding strategies. As we're learning to push back against our strategies, this lesson considers a whole menu of ancient spiritual practices, to help us counter a whole spectrum of fear-avoidance...