Weekly Messages
There’s an Elephant in the Room. You’re Riding It.
In this lesson, we continue our discussion on civil discourse across the divide. I encourage us to be suspicious of our own righteousness. It's a default response served up to us by our lower brains, which our upper brains dress up with nice justifications and...
Lefties Aren’t Right. Righties Have Work Left.
In this lesson we continue exploring how to listen across the political divide by examining the six moral foundations of humanity. Discover which three moral foundations the liberals value most highly and which four traditionally underlie conservative positions....
Amos, Partisan Politics, and Afflictive Emotions
From Hole Sexuality to Whole Sexuality (2)
Our sexual ground rules no longer serve us well. We developed them when we were agrarian and industrial societies. Now we live longer, we enter puberty earlier, and we marry later. Now, there is an average 15 year gap between sexual maturity and marriage. It is time...
From Hole Sexuality to Whole Sexuality (1)
All signs point to the fact that we are not handling our sexuality well. When we reduce sex to “the act” and miss its much broader context, we also reduce our experiences and relationships. Have a listen, Doug
Do the Right Thing! The Ancient Prophet Amos (part 2)
As we saw last week, we can sum up the message of the ancient prophets pretty simply. "Do the right thing . . . or suffer the consequences." That idea riled up some folks in our community this last week. It poked some old church hurts -- preachers threatening...
Do the Right Thing! The Ancient Prophet Amos (part 1)
We can sum up the message of the ancient prophets pretty simply. "Do the right thing . . . or suffer the consequences." To many religious folk, that sounds like a threat from God. In a recent TED talk, we realize, it's a pretty accurate description of what happens...
Recapping Our Summer of Listening
It's been our focus this summer -- the spiritual practice of listening. As the summer comes to an end, we revisit the important themes of the summer lesson, and point ourselves forward. Have a listen, Doug
Toward A Better World: Doing Our Bit
We're nearing the end of our "summer of listening." We began this summer with the premise that when people set aside time for spiritual listening, one thing they have heard through the ages is the call to repair the earth. And it is clear to anyone watching - our...
The Law of Three . . . And Hating Your Mom
Jesus said it, not me! Hate your mother! Hate your father. But maybe that's not the point. Maybe the point is being alert to the powerful pressure to conform -- best exerted on us by our people -- can keep us from discerning our ways forward. Yep. I think that's it....
The Law of Three . . . And the Jerk at Work
You have jerks in your life. Sure you do. But have you noticed that we usually have two categories of jerk around us? There are jerks that are "our" jerks, and those who are not. The one is not any jerkier than the other, but we somehow "get" them. Pull that thread a...
The Law of Three . . . And the Love of Pizza – Robin Camu
In our summer of listening, we are listening for "the Third Force," "the Reconciling Force." There's a good chance you don't know what that means. No problem. Robin Camu gave us a lesson recently (CLICK HERE) that helped frame for us, not only how we do the spiritual...
The Law of Three . . . And Disruptive Times
This summer, our community is setting aside time for the spiritual practices of listening. This summer our society is in upheaval. - Black Lives Matter, HB2, Dallas, Nice Divisions that have long simmered, are boiling over. Which makes listening critical. In this...
Creating A New Reality: The Law of Three
This is Doug. I'm writing about the lesson Robin gave this day. I'm writing because Robin would naturally be reluctant to promote her own lesson, and I think it was a very important framing lesson for the future of our community. It's important because it tells us...
Contemplative Sunday – July 10
Doug leads the congregation through a very powerful and moving contemplative session before the message. Please have a listen in a quiet moment.
A Fourth-of-July Message: Freedom!
Our Bill of Rights enshrines four essential, socio-political freedoms... - The freedom to speak and say what we think - The freedom to write and publish what we think - The freedom to assemble together and work toward changes we want - The freedom to worship in any...
Tikkun Olam
Nope. That's not a typo. Tikkun olam is a thing. A real thing. An ancient thing. When we set ourselves to the ancient practices of listening, the accumulated experience of those gone before us in our tradition gives us a set of expectations about some of the things...
Listening: It’s Hard . . . But Not That Hard (2)
We continue introducing our summer focus on the spiritual practice of listening. This summer, we're focusing on the art of spiritual listening. If you’re in Raleigh, I encourage you to be part of our Sundays at 1417 Clifton St. in Raleigh, to experience the practices...
Listening: It’s Hard . . . But Not That Hard (1)
We begin this week, a new lesson on the spiritual practice of listening. We're combining the lesson with a summer of practicing the art of listening together. If you're in Raleigh, I encourage you to be part of our Sundays at 1417 Clifton St. in Raleigh, to...
Expanding God’s Table – John Pavlovitz
By John Pavlovitz One of the images that most attracted me to church was the table of God where all were congregated together in unity. However, the church has done a lot since the time of Jesus to make the table of God smaller and more exclusive. We owe it to those...
Revisiting: The 2-Step Dance of the Spiritual Journey
Desire. Pay Attention. It's one of the central ways we talk about finding our way forward on the spiritual journey. Have a listen, Doug
Revisiting: We Resolve Conflict (2)
We continue looking at how the story we tell ourselves about sin profoundly shapes our instinct about ourselves, about one another, and about how we deal with the divided lives we all live. In particular, we explore how it affects the instincts we bring to resolving...
Revisiting: We Resolve Conflict (1)
As we've seen the story we tell ourselves about sin profoundly shapes our instinct about ourselves, about one another, and about how we deal with the divided lives we all live. Turns out, the story we tell ourselves about sin impacts how we approach conflict...
Revisiting: Sin Is Not That Big A Deal (4)
It's not a big deal (listen to the last three lessons), but it's a deal. It's a "ruin-our-lives" kind of deal. So we need to deal with it. When we tell ourselves that our defining center is ugly, ugly, sin-consciousness, we tend to deal with it one way. When we tell...