I had the opportunity to attend an event last evening where Rev. Alexia Salvatierra spoke on the topic of faith-rooted organizing, which is also the title of a book she co-authored.  She framed the discussion around the idea that we seems to have developed a notion that mercy and justice are two ends of a spectrum where if you lean more toward one, you lose the other.  Instead, she proposed that if we follow mercy all the way, it takes us to justice.  To show us what she meant, she gave us an example:  Imagine you find out that there is a young woman who is failing math at school.  What do you do?  If you tutor this young woman or find her the help she needs to succeed, you have begun the work of mercy.  Now imagine you find out that half of the children in this school are

  Nobody knows what time of year Jesus was actually born. But we in our climate zone enter the season of wakefulness and watchfulness – Advent –the time of year when the energy of trees has been drawn down into the roots.  After catching photons from the sun all summer, broadleaf trees drop their photosynthesizers, and depend on the life and energy already inside them to sustain them through the winter months. It’s a season of interiority.  Or, at least, it’s a season in which we are invited to pay careful attention to the life and energy within us. In this sense, we are all Mary this time of year.  We were foolish enough to say ‘Yes,’ and now we’re pregnant with something we barely understand.  It’s growing in there, and it wants out eventually.  It is both you and not-you.  It is for you, and ultimately for the world. 

Being ‘blessed’ is theologically complicated.  That’s what we more or less decided during our recent Sunday school discussion of Drew Hart’s book Trouble I’ve Seen: changing the way the church views racism.  How many of our ‘blessings’ are simply consequences of injustice?  We are indeed blessed, although it’s up to us to better understand what that sentiment does and doesn’t mean for us.  This season of gratitude is a good time to reflect on the ‘blessings’ we are truly grateful for.  Gratitude can be the posture from which we receive from the Source of Being – from whom all blessings flow — and return the goodness in a way that helps it spread and multiply. With gratitude for you all, Joel

I wrote this poem yesterday as another step in processing the moral climate of our country.    “Stealing leaves.  November, 2016.” “This is the first time I’ve seen anyone stealing leaves.” My neighbor had caught me in the act, wheelbarrow loaded full with bags full of leaves he had bagged, and placed on the curb, the place unwanted objects wait for pick up. He said it with a grin, and I grinned back. This pick up was for the soil, I replied, in our back yard, the garden.  His tree gifting us with free nutrients.  A good neighbor. I carted and dumped and spread and ran those leaves over and over with a lawnmower, which roared and moaned like anyone enjoying a good meal, the bits of leaves now resting on the ground, ready to absorb and multiply this offering. It is getting colder and darker, and I need to

  I wrote this poem yesterday as another step in processing the moral climate of our country.   “Stealing leaves.  November, 2016.” “This is the first time I’ve seen anyone stealing leaves.” My neighbor had caught me in the act, wheelbarrow loaded full with bags full of leaves he had bagged, and placed on the curb, the place unwanted objects wait for pick up. He said it with a grin, and I grinned back. This pick up was for the soil, I replied, in our back yard, the garden. His tree gifting us with free nutrients. A good neighbor.   I carted and dumped and spread and ran those leaves over and over with a lawnmower, which roared and moaned like anyone enjoying a good meal, the bits of leaves now resting on the ground, ready to absorb and multiply this offering.   It is getting colder and darker, and