Weekly Messages
Advent 2012 – Week 2
So sure, hope is a great thing. Sure, prophets speak and angels sing... "Comfort... comfort my people." That's all well and good. But brass-tacks reality insists we at least mention the high price exacted of those who bring hope into the earth. Look at how our...
Advent 2012 – week 1
When we think of "prophesy" we think of predicting the future. That's not what the ancients thought. They thought of prophets as "seers," seeing what the rest of us miss - and in particular, seeing the things of the Divine. Today, we read one of our ancient prophets...
When the Going Gets Tough… (and it does)
Perseverance is easy to say... difficult to maintain. Today we look at what perseverance does for us, and what in the world might motivate us to do it. Have a listen, Doug
Thanksgiving 2012 (2)
Again... Sometimes we make gratitude a perfunctory practice. Let it not be so! This is big! Transformative! Big! Have a listen, Doug
Thanksgiving 2012 (1)
Sometimes we make gratitude a perfunctory practice. Let it not be so! This is big! Transformative! Big! Have a listen, Doug
Spiritual Friendship: The Skills (6b)
Continuing our look at how language informs meaning, and in particular how the future perfect tense helps us think about... - the spiritual journey before us... - how we live in spiritual community. Have a listen, Doug
Spiritual Friendship: The Skills (6a)
Living in the Future-Perfect Tense. Yet another skill necessary if we would reweave the spiritual community so necessary for our souls to thrive. Here's how it works. We live in Time-X. But the great hope of our tradition is a state of redemption and soul-health. We...
Spiritual Friendship: The Skills (5b)
"Service." We continue looking at how service wears down and wears out the false-self beliefs we build our lives on. It's a hassle, to be sure. However, it is a hassle the way eating salad is a hassle. We may prefer nachos and beer, but two things: 1) salads can...
Spiritual Friendship: The Skills (5a)
"Service." One of the ancient skills necessary to live well in the environment in which our souls thrive. One of the ancient skills necessary to live in authentic spiritual community. But perhaps not for the reasons you might think. We come to the ancient Christian...
Spiritual Friendship: The Skills (4)
"Confession." That's a word I hate to use because of the images I know it conjures up. If we grew up Catholic, we see images of boxes and priests telling us to say "hail-Mary's." If we grew up Protestant, we see ourselves telling our dark sins to the preacher or the...
Spiritual Friendship: The Skills (3)
It's tough to put a name on skill #3 in this lesson... maybe "developing a tougher skin?" Maybe "being able to receive criticism?" No, neither of those are right. In fact, in this lesson I never give this skill a name. Probably closest would be "putting personal...
Spiritual Friendship: The Skills (2)
Humility. As we saw earlier this year, humility is often misunderstood. It smacks of servility or insecurity. Not so. Humility starts with a profound understanding that we carry the image of God, and a settled understanding of what it means to be human - growing....
Spiritual Friendship: The Skills (1)
Skill #1: Growth. Stands to reason doesn't it? If we don't have a learning and growing posture, we don't grow into the skills, competencies, and emotional framework to do spiritual friendships well. Look around if you don't believe me. As a society, we feel deeply...
Spiritual Community in a Mid-Size Church (3)
Before the holiday break we were talking about how we, as we are becoming a mid-size church, can keep alive one of our core values - authentic spiritual community. Continuing that lesson today, we're talking about several related themes; today, some stories relating...
Labor Day Sunday 2012 (Listening to Fenalon)
We're in the middle of a lesson on authentic spiritual community, but it's Labor Day Sunday and many of us are traveling. So, rather than continue the lesson that's building one week on the next, I thought I'd just do a stand-alone, kind-of-related lesson. It's really...
Spiritual Community in a Mid-Size Church (2)
In our fiercely independent and individualistic culture, authentic community is tough. Authentic spiritual community... even tougher. Nevertheless, we're going to try and do it. As a mid-size, American church, we're going to try and figure out how to form networks of...
Spiritual Community in a Mid-Size Church (1)
Our community has doubled in size in the last three years, with a lot of that growth coming in the last 12 months. Community has always been a value of ours, but now, we leave small church behind us, and are becoming a mid-size church, we have to be very intentional...
Why Do Quantum Christians Forgive? (2)
We continue our look at how our ancient spiritual masters intuited that we are more connected than we believed - to God, to one another, to everything. We continue looking at the implication of that ancient understanding when we fracture our relationships. The...
Why Do Quantum Christians Forgive? (1)
We've been talking about the ancient intuition among our spiritual masters that told us we are more connected than we believed - to God, to one another, to everything. If we believe that; if that gets into our heads and hearts, it has profound implications for how we...
Can Quantum Christians Still Pray?
When our images of God go through an expanding metamorphosis, the kind or praying we used to do when we still had only one image gets challenged. For many of us, the only image of God we had was 'Our Father Who art in heaven." When this becomes one way of thinking...
God and Slave Traders
The idea of God exists at a deep, deep part of our reality. It is a bedrock of our sense of ultimacy. And this shapes our every action and reaction. There is an axiom we use around the church a lot: "you become like the god you worship." If yours is a punitive god,...
God as Superman… God as Dirt (dirt might work better)
"Dirt" actually has a derogatory connotation. Perhaps "Ground" would be better... maybe "Ground of All Being." Yes, that's better. Historical, even. Listen as we think about Psalm 139 from two vantage points. If we think of God as superman, we read the psalm one...
Be Present to Your Presence in the Present – Robin Camu
by Robin Camu John 15:4-5 (NASB): "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit,...
Conflict Resolution (part 2)
This is the second of two lessons on conflict resolution. In this lesson we learn the actual technique for resolving conflict. As you heard in part 1, and will have reinforced here, it has more to do with self-awareness and self-disclosure than resolving conflict....