Mary Oliver, thank you. The simple elegance of your poems exquisitely mirrors what is miraculous in nature – that out of seemingly simple elements placed in fortunate proximity and serendipitous … [Read more...]
When I Am Dead and Gone
Did you ever ask yourself: When you are dead and gone what will they say about you? Surely at a funeral, or reading someone’s obituary? Maybe you played that group ice-breaker game in which you’re … [Read more...]
Foxy’s Not Alone
I am going to do two things I normally do not do in a sermon. The first is to read an extended bit of prose, and the second is to “proclaim.” I know preachers are supposed to proclaim, but I … [Read more...]
Ah, the Seasons!
If it were mid-summer, a cloudless blue sky with the lake sparkling diamonds of morning light, and the only thing a body wanted to do was sit still and not move, it could be a warning sign of … [Read more...]
How to Win Back Your Heart (Not for the Faint of Heart)
There is an experience in seminary I want to slice open and so share its fruit with you. But I doubt I can do it justice. It has to do with the Bible – with entering into the text for the first … [Read more...]
A Definite Maybe
This sermon should be entitled, “What’s wrong with maybe?” “You wouldn’t believe what once or twice I have seen,” Mary Oliver writes, and she tells us the world is wider than the “rigid house … [Read more...]
Christmas Eve 2018: Gulping Milk and Knowing Presence
Merry Christmas. This may not seem like a Christmas sermon at first, but wait for it. When we were small the world was liquid and grown-ups poured it into us, sometimes in small … [Read more...]
Bite into Hope
Oh, Anne Sexton, I do love you so: “…The trees poke out of sheets and each branch wears the sock of God. There is hope. There is hope everywhere. I bite it… There is hope…Today God gives … [Read more...]
A Sunday Sermon, Shrunk and Secularized for the General Public
There is a message wrapped in the Christmas story that doesn’t get opened on Christmas Eve, and for good reason. It is counter-cultural. We can save it for other times of the year. But it is a message … [Read more...]
It’s A Wonder
You hold a baby in your arms and rock her or him, and their fat little face looks up into yours. You look into that sweet face…and wonder. You wonder. You wonder about what she will be when … [Read more...]
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