Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could all be this well trained in the things that bring joy to others and to ourselves? This is 10-month-old Barclay wanting to please the Alpha Dog and the Beta Dog. The commands were sit, down, roll over, off (which means “leave it”), come, and heel.
Sermon at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN, Sunday of the Transfiguration, March 4, 2014.
This brief film from the University of California at Berkley posted by upworthy.com is as clear as it gets re: poverty, wealth, and government welfare. Well worth a watch.
Pete Seeger sings a song that rallies the best in us to continue his work of changing the world. God’s countin’ on me; God’s countin’ on you!
There is nothing quite like sexual brutality and fear to scare people to death.
In this TV ad a lecherous, sadistic, evil Uncle Sam substitutes himself for the doctors for a young women’s gynecological exam and a young man’s annual prostate exam. This is the definition of demagoguery. When and where will the Right Wing stop? The actual name for “Obamacare” is The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It was enacted by Congress after many compromises. Demagoguery is leading the populace, in this case the American public, by appealing to prejudices and emotions.
Anticipating Shepherd of the Hill Dialogues’ “Voices of the Slaves” program celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, we offer Sojourner Truth’s speech here on Views from the Edge. The Tuesday Dialogue on Oct. 15 (7:00 P.M.) will feature dramatic readings like this one and the music that originated in the cotton fields.
Sojourner Truth
A Sermon at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN, August 11, 2013.
This sermon was preached at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN the Sunday following the bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It draws on Red Sox player David Ortiz’s nationally televised statement “This is our (expletive) city!”; Richard Rohr’s “Finding God in the Depths of Silence” (Sojourners, March, 2013), and the Epistle of James’ insight that the “tongue” (i.e., speech) is “a restless evil” ready to curse others even while it blesses “the God and Father of us all.” “Brothers and sisters,” writes James, “this should not be so!”
The sermon calls for engagement in the inner silence that moves down into the undivided reality that words so easily and quickly divide and destroy. It ends with the Pie Jesu from Gabriel Faure’s Requiem and the invitation “Be still, and know that I am God.”
A sermon on forgiveness as releasing or letting go preached at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN April 7, 2013. The sermon is indebted to Professor Robert Kegan, neo-Piagetian psychologist at Harvard University and Professor Mona Gustafson Affinito, Southern Connecticut State University Professor Emerita and author of Forgiving One Page at a Time and other books on the theology and psychology of forgiveness.
News of Jonathan Winters’s death arrived today. This conversation with him at the presentation of a Sedona Film Festival tribute is priceless for its humility, humor, honesty, and unvarnished humanity. It begins with a short clip from the Tonight Show with Jack Paar.
Views from the Edge 