Weekly Messages
Don’t Waste Your Time Going to Church (part 2)
Today, we begin looking at the exercises that in aggregate, constitute the Sunday morning Christian experience. Looking at the word "liturgy," we realize that what we're doing is closer to going to a gym-for-the-soul, than it is to many of our understandings of...
Don’t Waste Your Time Going to Church (part 3)
We're looking at the exercises we've been doing together on Sundays for centuries and centuries. As anything we do for an extend period, they can become rote, and we can begin to practice them without understanding or without a vested interest. So we're thinking...
Don’t Waste Your Time Going to Church (part 4)
We continue looking at the Sunday exercises, thinking about these ancient spiritual exercises. Today, we think about the exercise of invoking in one another, sensitivity to Spirit. Have a listen. Doug
Don’t Waste Your Time Going to Church (conclusion)
Today, we conclude this lesson on the ancient exercises we do together on Sundays. We look at the exercise that includes stilling our hearts, becoming attentive, interpreting, and discerning. This may be one of the only times you'll ever hear a minister tell you to...
Easter 2010
Any minister worth his or her salt, works very hard preparing the Easter message. But me?? I'm doing a version of last year's Easter message. What kind of sloppy work is that? Here's what happened... I was reading through a bunch of things I'd gathered through the...
The Spirituality of How We Think About God (2)
Today, we conclude this short, 2-week lesson looking at how we think about God. Our "God-as-Person" metaphor, we see, limits our spirituality. We're looking at a more expansive spirituality available to us when transcend our historical tendency to explain God with...
The Spirituality of How We Think About God (1)
Today, we begin a short lesson together (only two weeks) in which we look at what comes to our minds when we use the word "God." Usually, it's a super-big-and-wonderful Person, a King, a Parent, a Bridegroom, a Righteous Judge. These are all metaphors for God found...
Friends for the Fray: The Lost Art of Confession (part 4)
We conclude looking at the art of confession with this lesson on two themes... 1. what is penance, and what is it's value to our souls? 2. how do we receive a confession well? Have a listen. Doug
Friends for the Fray: The Lost Art of Confession (part 3)
So, after a few weeks championing the benefits confession affords our souls, we come today, to the practical "how-to's" of this ancient practice. We look at making a good confession in three parts, 1) self-awareness, 2) thoroughness, and 3) penance (Only some...
Friends for The Fray: The Lost Art of Confession (part 2)
After last week's digression to reinforce the importance of making for ourselves a healthy spiritual community, today we resume looking at the practicality of this ancient spiritual spiritual practice, confession. The themes of this lesson are very personal for me....
Friends For The Fray: A Digression to Reinforce
In this lesson, we digress for a moment before addressing the practicalities of the ancient art of confession (next week). This digression will expand what I said last week, and I'll spend the lion's share of our time telling you a story from my own life. It's a story...
Friends for the Fray: The Lost Art of Confession (part 1)
The ancient art of confession is lost to most Christians today. It is a loss that causes great peril to our souls. In this lesson, we talk about the importance of this ancient practice, and some of the reasons we tend to resist it.
Friends for the Fray: An Imperative
Solitary Spirituality and the Path to Anemia – Why You Shouldn’t Go It Alone "The Big Three," pride, lust, and greed, are a part of the human condition. Though we Americans have been schooled in individualism, and independence, solitary spirituality leaves us anemic...
Friends for the Fray: Challenging Pride, Lust, and Greed
by Doug Hammack The "Big Three" temptations of life have a long and storied tradition. The ancients called them "the lust of the eyes," "the lust of the flesh," and "the pride of life." We think of them as pride (an excessive focus on self), lust (an excessive focus...
Repent – A Changing of One’s Mind – Robin Camu
by Robin Camu Scientists are finding out that our minds are more “plastic” than we ever dreamed. They are finding that neural pathways can be changed resulting in minds being changed. Likewise, when Jesus commanded us to repent (literally, to change one’s mind), He...
New Year 2010 (part 2)
by Doug Hammack The New Year marks an annual invitation to personal renewal. Last week, we looked at how human beings best change. In this second lesson about personal renewal, we look at the unconscious resistance to renewal and change we often put up. We all have...
Meditation: Four Practical Steps
by Doug Hammack Centering Prayer is an updated form of the ancient meditative practice, lectio divina. Because many Christians are frightened by anything Eastern, in this lesson we put those fears to rest, talking about what meditation is, and then four practical...
New Year 2010
by Doug Hammack As we come to another New Year, we look again at how human beings best change. We all have areas of growth before us in the coming year, areas originating in the heart of God. Today’s lesson talks about discerning the purposes of the Divine, and...
Good Power vs. Bad: Insiders and Outsiders
by Doug Hammack Continuing our look at good and bad power, we turn to how one comes to be a user of the former. How do we become good-power people? Jesus had a lot to say about power, and critical to his teaching was an understanding that successful people, in-group...
Good Power vs. Bad: Humility
by Doug Hammack In this second installment of our lesson on Good Power, we look first at how necessary humility is to exercising good power, and second, how we develop humility in our souls. (Sorry, no nifty picture this week.)
Good Power vs. Bad: Definitions
by Doug Hammack As we've been looking at the ancient pathways that tend the soul's well-being, we've seen that many of those practices involve interacting with other people. Consequently, the issue of power comes into play. In these Advent lessons, we take a side...
Why We Train Our Souls
by Doug Hammack We've been talking about a series of soul-training practices all Fall. In this lesson we pause from these content-dense lessons, to reflect on why we want to train our souls in the first place. I determined to teach this lesson to myself as I focus my...
Thanksgiving 2009
by Doug Hammack Each year around the Thanksgiving holiday, we revisit the theme of gratitude and thankfulness. This ancient path, like the others we're examining this fall, has power to transform, strengthen, and awaken our souls.
Soul-Training: Kindness to Strangers (part 4)
by Doug Hammack We continue looking at the Divine Call to be a hospitable people to strangers and outsiders, 1200 years after the Calling of Abraham was issued. This soul-training tool is again, a powerful means to both better the earth and transform our souls...