Blog
Seven principles of powerful prayer
February 22, 2017
For decades I have offered help to persons who are looking for work. I give feedback on their resumés, but the main thing I do is take them in seven steps to more powerful decision-action or prayer. I ask, “Do you want the religious version or the non-religious version?”
What is God saying to our world?
February 17, 2017
I believe that God has messages for our world, and that we can achieve better communication with him. Today I started anew. I tried to imagine what God might want to communicate. Here are my imaginings.
Urgent concerns and the long path of learning to live the truth
February 13, 2017
Living the truth encompasses the truths of material fact, intellectual meaning, and spiritual value. But some material facts are ugly and cruel. In Deity, truth consorts divinely with beauty and goodness. So how can we practice these values in our earthly environment?
Why Laugh?
February 10, 2017
Laughter? Reasons? Causes? Occasions? A child securely strapped to the back of his mother on a wonderful hike; the awareness of being with you–whom I love!–at the beginning of each podcast episode; the complete security that follows total commitment to the will of God; good news; a good joke; the call to rejoice.
Can’t my truth be different from your truth?
February 7, 2017
Truth is alive, sturdy yet flexible, a gift of God discovered by the scientist who experiments intelligently, the philosopher who interprets wisely, and the believer who studies, serves, prays, and worships in spirit and in truth. One person’s truth can differ from another’s in the sense that truth is many-sided, and for various reasons people often focus more on one side than on another. The more we seek truth in its wholeness, the more we live the truth.
The golden rule’s six levels of meaning
January 31, 2017
Amid happy laughter among friends, equals in the family, the rule of living–Do to others as you want others to do to you–unfolds in three levels, then six levels. A path to ascend to the way Jesus lived the golden rule is full of lessons, including lessons about how not to get overwhelmed by a seeming Mount Everest of idealistic challenge. Relax. Learn. And don’t let philosophical complexity upstage your moral and spiritual intuition! The golden rule is about living the truth in love.
All your good work has a ripple effect
January 25, 2017
First a report of my experience at Wrayco this morning. Next, a reflection on the reports I heard about marches last Sunday in Washington and Cleveland.
Walking in beauty of heaven and earth
January 21, 2017
Walking in beauty integrates person and community with land, cosmos, and Deity. The heavenly pattern of that integration is truth that we can taste, “on earth as it is in heaven.” The goodness of beauty assures us that we can share this taste with others. Trusting the promise of our personal and planetary destiny, we relax and enjoy the unfolding. Not that life is easy, but the meaning and value of our struggles make the yoke light.
Mercy as love’s attitude to imperfect beings
January 11, 2017
. . . two transformative discoveries catalyzed by Margaret Benefiel’s book The Soul of a Leader: first the realization of myself together with a future congregation as a living organism, and second, a new level of self-realization—of myself as soul. The next day . . . a great revelation of mercy as divine love applied to . . . imperfections . . . .