Wild places are at the heart of those sacred memories that resist the erosion of time. There has to be a reason for that. It is not just that the Earth plays the role of a passive host in so many of our profound spiritual experiences, it is as real of a character in our memories as the flesh and blood people we love.

So the question is, how do languishing and weary people find enough hope to imagine there is a future for their faith community when they are dealing with more than enough of their own personal uncertainty?

I think Jesus almost getting lynched in his hometown, and all the other times’ powerful people tried to off him demonstrates that Jesus wasn’t suggesting some kind of metaphorical or spiritual liberation for the poor, he was suggesting a radical and disruptive change that made those with privilege and power so uneasy that they wanted to kill him.

I have the demon on my shoulder, whispering suggestions of my unworthiness for my sabbatical. And even when I do resist it, it teases me with laziness and guilts me with the feeling that I’ve squandered something

The risk of being in a human community with other people is the exact same place where we discover both the dismay of conflict and the joy of belonging, but rarely one without the other. Perhaps it is the greatest risk of our lives to enter into the experiment of human community

The paradoxical seeing of favor in our lowliness is just a part of the continued paradoxical longing of the divine for a world with rightly ordered priorities. That God loves and chooses us in our lowliness is the antidote to our ever-present self-doubts about our worthiness for love, and our ability to love our neighbors.

If we are able to embrace that we contain multitudes we may find that in this openness we are lead into the same potential of Mary and Joseph, to carry and birth a living light into a world so desperate for it.

When I see a billboard admonishing being woke, I also see a billboard praising and upholding an expression of Christianity that has been sustained under the sins of white supremacy, and the doctrine of discovery. I see a form of Christianity that has been intentionally lulled to sleep by those in power. What would happen if American Christians were awakened from this sleep, and actually started organizing, dreaming, and creating the alternative reality of compassionate love and care for our neighbors, as modeled by Jesus Christ himself?

Sometimes we think that changing someones mind on something is as easy as giving them the facts. I think we all know that is hardly enough. But why? In this message Mark Pratt-Russum explores the power of group identity in creating belonging, and how we need to be aware of this power when in engaging with folks with whom we disagree.

Experimental knowing is scary knowing for folks who find comfort in the institutional and intellectual elements of a faith tradition. Experimentation is unpredictable and risky. Experimenters usually don’t dress the same as others do. They sometimes hang out in the desert, they grow their hair long, and eat locusts and wild honey.

We don’t need to work so hard, to study theology for years, to close our eyes and focus really, really hard to hear God’s voice. It is here, visible with our two eyes. We taste it on our lips. We sip it up with a spoon. We water it with a hose in the morning, we dip our feet into it.  

Desire reorientation, or resetting often opens us up to new territory. We find ourselves in space where we know the happiness and purpose that comes from being compassionate to ourselves and our neighbors. We see the power in liberation from oppression, both for ourselves, and especially our neighbors who have lived and still live with those chains.

What if we made our money, time, attention, and energy useless to those who use it to isolate us, destroy our planet, and keep us dependent on them for our happiness and well-being? How might we be intentionally too weird or too difficult to proceed easily toward the sawmill? 

Imagine with me the loosening of those tightened bands of muscle in our jaws and shoulders, imagine with me the soft fingers moving through your hair and the warmth of your head in the lap of who holds you as their beloved.

I think we all know the feeling of questioning our belonging, and constantly working to prove our worthiness and our place. To the people in this space who have heard directly from so-called preachers of the gospel that you are unworthy of God’s love, I want to say that I am so, so, so sorry and that they were wrong.

On Sunday morning, Mark worshipped in a cathedral with a million-dollar bell tower, and on Sunday evenings he pulled food out of a trader joe's dumpster to eat. The paradox of the Christian church in America is that it exists alongside Empire mentality. What does it mean for Jesus followers to bring about the Kin-dom of God in the midst of Empire?

Octavia Butler, in her Parable series, shares this revelation with readers, “God is Change.” One night, while watching TV, Franklin Graham was beamed into my living room and he challenged Butler. He wanted me to know that God never changes…

Perhaps it is time for us to unrest ourselves from the rational, static approach to the Bible. The Black Church has engaged with Dr. Christena Cleveland has called "sanctified imagination" when it comes to the Christian story. What can the white church learn from our brothers and sisters?

I, like so many others, learned about the extraordinary life cycle of an emperor penguin by watching the documentary “The March of the Penguins.” It is narrated by the iconic Morgan Freeman, and his deep and calming voice accompanies us on the incredible journey. As the title suggests, the film documents the march of these penguins inland to breeding grounds. The largest recorded colony is known as the Halley Bay colony. Scientists have observed as much as 23,000 pairs, or 46,000 individual penguins gathering at this site.

When you were a child, how were you taught to be in your feelings? Were you rushed through experiences of anger or sadness to make you arrive at a more "pleasant" emotional state? In this message, Mark invites us to ponder the expectations we have of others, especially when it comes to their emotional responses. As we listen to the voices of BIPOC, how are we creating expectations that the only way we can be reached is if they tamper down their anger?