Weekly Messages
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...
The Indignation Indication
A healthy dose of righteous indignation can be a powerful catalyst for action toward repairing the earth. ...key words being – healthy dose. But, sometimes, our indignation is yet another strategy for avoiding fear. When it is, our effectiveness at being agents of...
No Fear, No Transformation . . . Know Fear, Know Transformation
The regular occurrence of laments in our Christian lectionary cycle testifies to the fact that acknowledging affliction and fear is a healthy and a necessary part of the spiritual journey. When we distract ourselves with comforts and pleasures to avoid feeling our...
Don’t Let Your Tools . . . Make You a Tool
When we let our technology fool us into believing we are safe and invincible, our tools . . . make us tools. When religion devolves into just another technology we use to allay our fears, we miss the opportunity to transform our relationship with fear and enter into...
Trading Mudpies in the Slum for Sandcastles at the Sea
C.S. Lewis lamented that we settle in our lives, far too easily. In this lesson, we see that when we use religion as a tactic to calm our fears, we are settling for a second hand-religion. Religion can do better. It holds out the promise of first-hand...
A Divine Experience of Fear
Today's lesson is an introduction to our next series, "Transcending a Religion of Fear." We look at a point of origin for how religion has so often had an unsavory relationship to fear. When we use religion as a psychological crutch to avoid and distract ourselves...
Circling Back: "Being Christian in the Quantum Era"
NRCC’s journey began many years ago, desconstructing Enlightenment-Era church. After that, we began reconstructing a way to be Christian in the Quantum Era. Along the way, among the writings and practices of our ancient Christian Mothers and Fathers, we found a set of...
Follow Your Vice to Virtue – Robin Camu
Vice and virtue are two sides of the same coin. Rather than rejecting your “sins of the ego”, Robin Camu suggests bringing awareness to them in the moment, offering yourself loving kindness, and watching them melt into opportunities for virtue to flourish. Have a...
Making Correct Change: Cashiers and Christians
It's our Christian mandate to change the world . . . and Lord knows it needs changing these days. But how do we do good - but do it better? How do we make change - that matters? Paul points us to some tools that help. Even in the quantum era, we Christians still rely...
A Shout Out to Sweet Baby Jesus
In this lesson we are reminded of the story of hope the Baby Jesus represents. When we are despairing, Baby Jesus reminds us the light is bigger than darkness, life is bigger than death, love wins over fear. And it is only from a position of hope that we garner the...
You Can’t Make the Journey to Oneness Alone
Our embattled world needs repair. Developing a oneness orientation will be key to unlocking our entrenchments and releasing us to deep transformation. In this lesson we continue discussing our community's intention to be a heterogeneous church. We believe the radical...
Family Recipe for Tense Times – Stir in a Pinch of Gratitude
Advent 2016 - Week 1 During this season of Advent, we focus on waiting in the darkness (and especially so, in this present time of darkness) with hope. With gratitude being the fountainhead of hope, our tradition points us to intentionally stirring gratitude to...
11-20-16 (Post Election Firestorm)
A Call to Care (Part 2) – Chris Graebe
by Chris Graebe This is the last lesson in the series that Doug started on Amos and what he had to say about social divisions and their impact.
A Call to Care – Scott Shackleton
By Scott Shackleton Today is Orphan Sunday. It is a time to reflect on those who really need our caring for them and it gives us a chance to expand our empathy. Have a listen.
A Tale of Two Brains… Or… This is your Brain. This is Your Brain on Affluence
We continue our discussion around talking across the divide. In today's lesson we look at the effects both affluence and poverty have on our brains, and the corresponding ways those effects influence our spiritual journeys. Have a listen, Doug