Weekly Messages
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...
Soul-Training: Kindness to Strangers (part 3)
by Doug Hammack We continue looking at hospitality as a soul-training tool, a way to both better the earth and transform our souls.
Soul-Training: Kindness to Strangers (part 2)
by Doug Hammack We continue looking at hospitality as a soul-training tool, a way to both better the earth and transform our souls.
Soul-Training: Kindness to Strangers (part 1)
by Doug Hammack As we're talking about the ancient paths that tend to the well-being of the soul, we turn to the early practice of hospitality. From the time of Abraham, this has been a central theme of spiritual people.
Soul-Training: The Welcoming Prayer
by Doug Hammack In this lesson we look at a very practical way to turn our prayer less into words, and more into awakening to the awareness of what God is already up to. It's a contemplative practice for daily use called The Welcoming Prayer.
Soul-Training: Praying Differently (introduction)
by Doug Hammack Many have abandoned prayer as irrelevant, incomprehensible, or useless. Sadly, there is good reason why they have done so. In this lesson we talk about how prayer has devolved into talking, talking, talking, and the underlying unspoken assumption...
Soul-Training: Making Peace
by Doug Hammack At first glance, making peace doesn't appear to be a discipline for training one's soul... Have a listen!
Tending Our Souls (Introduction)
by Doug Hammack Today we lay a foundation for a series of lessons about tending the gardens of our souls. To become the kind of people other people want to be around, indeed the kind of people we ourselves want to be around, requires attentiveness to spiritual growth....
Difficult People
by Doug Hammack Today we listen to the wisdom of one of the wise men of our Christian heritage. His name was Francois Fenelon. He lived about 400 years ago, and wrote spiritual letters, many of which have survived. In the letter we look at today, he writes about...
A Talk With a Precious 12-Year Old Little Girl
by Doug Hammack This week I (Doug) had an appointment with one of the 12 year old girls in our community. Her mom brought her by to talk about question she has about God. She'd just been diagnosed with Crohn's disease and was asking a variation of an ancient trouble...
NRCC Community Meeting
by Doug Hammack Today we look at the pragmatics of our spiritual community; why we're here, where we're going, our future, our finances, and practical things we can all do to keep NRCC thriving.
A Living Letter: My Friend Jim Amundson
by Doug Hammack This week, my dear friend and a fixture in our spiritual community died. Jim Amundson was a letter from God, written for us to read. In today's lesson, I discuss Divine Grace, and my text will be Jim's life. Jim Amundson 1936-2009 A Living Letter...
From Theology to Spirituality: "In the Image of God" (part 2)
by Doug Hammack We continue thinking about the spiriutality that is built on the foundation we've been looking at for many weeks. In those lessons we did some rethinking of the unquestioned assumptions that often goes into the doctrines of our faith.
From Theology to Spirituality: "In The Image of God" (part 1)
by Doug Hammack For many weeks, we've been thinking about the theology of our faith, and how our unquestioned assumptions, and the things taught us often betray us and lead us into a sickened spiritual state. Today we begin to look at how rebuild a healthy...
Thinking About Thinking About Jesus (Appendix)
by Doug Hammack In the lesson we did before the summer break, there were two Stories about how we think about Jesus "dying to save us," that we couldn't fit in. I thought they were beautiful enough stories that they needed to be retold, so in this lesson I tell them...
Be The Apple – Scott Brown
by Scott Brown
The Third Way
by Scott Brown Jesus's admonition to love our enemies and turn the other cheek may be mis-interpreted due to the lack of cultural context he placed it in. Find out what Jesus may have intended it to mean by looking for a third way to react to an insult to you....