How serendipitous! The BBC news agency published an article on Sept. 2nd relating that Prof. Stephen Hawking, in his latest book The Grand Design, has concluded that God was not necessary to create the universe. Among Hawking’s statements: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch-paper and set the universe going”…”The Big Bang […]
If you like the idea of adventure, if you don’t want to spend your days floating in a tiny boat called “My Knowledge,” and are willing to risk jumping into the vast ocean containing “Infinite Mystery”…then I’ve got a mooring for you. Here is where God resides, with an anchor weighty enough for firm grounding and yet light enough […]
Hugh Prather, whom the New York Times has called “an American Kahil Gibran”, wrote a book with the title of today’s blog. In it, are anecdotes, observations, and spiritual wisdom that Prather has collected and absorbed for himself in over 30 years as minister, lecturer, and counselor. You may have notebooks or quotes on your memo board that speak […]
Prelude: Friedrich Schleirermacher (1768-1834), considered by many to be the “Father of Modern Protestant Theology”, in his Addresses on Religion (1799), remarked: “Religion is the outcome neither of the fear of death nor the fear of God. It answers a deep need in man. It is not a metaphysic, nor a morality, but above all […]
In my last post, I ended the questions “what is worship?” and “who is it for?” Well, worship is a lot like community farming. You come together and grow as a group. You have your own individual patch of ground, but what you are cultivating is part of the greater whole. There is a sense of purpose that is […]
The Christian Century‘s August 10, 2010 cover story, entitled “Our God is Too Nice”, contains a survey conducted by the National Study of Youth and Religion on what today’s Christian American teenagers believe. They created a new term to describe this loosely held set of beliefs, “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”. Here is a condensed version of […]
You know, with all the ranting and raving that runs the airways these days, the predictably controversial talking heads of radio along with their shouting and outright rude counterparts on television “news” (and I do use the word lightly) programs, one would think we have become a nation of adamant nonsense. What I hear sounds more like the […]
Hi Guys, When I quoted Simone Weil, I meant to type “one cannot renounce with out being degraded, not one can.” That makes a big difference.
Note: Please hold this quote from Walt Whitman while reading today’s blog: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” Ever since my days with the nuns (the real ones, who by the way I drove crazy with my incessant questioning during Catholic catechism classes), I have struggled in […]
What is it about fountains that make people go, ahhh, or that entice little kids to run through them (clad or unclad)? You know how they make you feel happy in either a peaceful kind of way or in a ‘yippee it’s a party’ kind of way? I’ve been thinking about this for off and […]
