The moment of asking for help is a tender moment.

On my worst days, it is gravity I am most grateful for: the way the earth pulls at me from her core, yearns for me, keeps me pressed tightly against her surface. When my own core is hollowed out, when I have no more mass than a leaf dead on the branch, still this is enough for the earth to find me.

I invite you to enter a period of quiet for a guided meditation. You may wish to adjust your position so that your spine is straight, your body relaxed, your hands resting gently in your lap. You will probably want to close your eyes and shut out all the distractions of the light....

If another strains to breathe, may our voices be the gentle rise and fall. If another chokes on tears, may our voices be an opening to hope. If another has forgotten, may our voices be a memory upwelling. If another is adrift, may our voices be the calling of community.

Let us listen deeply to what is on our hearts, Let us listen to what our fears are; Let us listen to the young children, Let us listen to the teens, Let us listen to the elders. Let us listen when the world is sick. Let us listen....

For the setting sun from an airplane window; for the rising sun from a train window after riding all night; for the rising sun and setting sun in directions that feel foreign; for the sunlight even when we are lost. For the times the heart has longed to be alone. For the times the heart has ached...

I believe in the radical idea that men have the full human capacity to nurture.

I invite you into a period of quiet meditation. Close your eyes if you wish, and get comfortable in your seat. Think about the father-figure you carry in your heart. I invite you to remember the gifts and the wounds you received from that person or persons. If any feelings come up, just breathe...

All that we have been separately and all that we will become together is stretched out before and behind us like stars scattered across a canvas of sky. We stand at the precipice, arms locked together like tandem skydivers working up the courage to jump. Tell me, friends: What have we got to lose?

Imagine this. On the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, every fall, every year, the people make their peace with anyone they have wronged or slighted or injured or in any way neglected in the past twelve months....

People ask me sometimes, “Is this a gay church?” It is a privilege to answer: “Ours is absolutely, gladly, hopefully and humbly, gaily, a gay church, a gay tradition, where everyone, including heterosexual members and friends, is welcome, where everyone is needed, where everyone’s experience...

Six weeks into the church year, I have realized that I am the minister of a church where things usually go wrong. This morning the copy machine jams repeatedly. The bulletin describing the order of worship has been copied with the second page first and also upside down....

Blessed is this ground on which we stand. Holy is this place. Holy are the places of memory, the places which have formed us, where we store the icons of success and shattered dreams and gather threads and pieces of what we would become. . . Holy are the places of memory....

“We want to give you an update on our progress,” the captain said over the PA. A silent groan went through the passengers: the word “update” meant the problem wasn’t fixed. I was on a plane sitting on the tarmac trying to get to the East coast where I was officiating at my nephew’s...

Let us tell the stories of mothers… stories that could be true. Let us tell of warm mothers, soft and round, likely to be found with flour on their nose, and always ready to pour you a glass of milk to go with the cookies on your plate. These mothers are increasingly rare. Let us tell of mothers...

In a world so filled with brokenness and sorrow It would be easy to lose ourselves in never ending grief, To be choked by our outrage To be paralyzed by the enormity of suffering, To feel our hearts squeeze tight with hopelessness....

When we are overwhelmed with the world And cannot see our way clear, When life seems a struggle between tedium and apathy Or frenzy and exhaustion; When today seems a punishment and tomorrow a torment, May we find the courage of patience. May we recognize courage in ourselves and our companions;...

In between, liminal, that space where we wait. Between moments; events, results, action, no action. To stand on the threshold, waiting for something to end, And something new to arrive, a pause in the rumble of time. Awareness claims us, alert, a shadow of something different....

Our locks tell us a lot about our lives. Locks of all kinds hold my attention because of a dream I had when I was thirteen. In the dream a gray-haired woman in a white coat sat behind a desk. I knew she was me, far in the future. Behind her on the wall was a cross-stitched sampler with a motto. I...

I have purchased a set of Islamic prayer beads from one of our local shop owners. The set has ninety-nine beads, one for each of the names of God in Islam....