The Commons

Cocoon or Chrysalis? This would make a good sermon title and theme. The church can either shroud you in a cocoon of safety and religiosity, or enfaith you in a chrysalis of change and metamorphosis. The “sheltering arms” do not domesticate us in a playpen, but prepare us and push…

The Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) had claimed that being in love was essentially a matter of attention abnormally fixed. He says, “Falling in love, initially, is no more than this: attention abnormally fastened upon another person.”  His claim is that the lover is one who can abnormally…

It’s all about relationship: “Early in her relationship with her God, Israel discovered that her religion was unlike the fertility religions of her neighbors, which reenacted the stories of the gods. Her faith is not about the battles and love affairs of the gods above, but in God’s relationship to…

Jesus turns the world upside down, making us see like newborns? In the physics of light, the image projected on the retina is upside down. Our brain reorients it for us. But newborns for their first few weeks actually see upside down.  http://www.physlink.com/Education/askExperts/ae353.cfm    

Two brothers, aged 8 and 11, were notoriously naughty, sometimes virtually out of control. They had such a reputation that whenever some mischief took place at school or at church, the assumption of the boys’ parents and teachers was that they were involved in some way. When they were almost…

I don’t agree with Rilke, but it is great writing. And it can be a great foil for teaching on how God will not be without a witness, but God cares for every witnesser as much as the witness. “If I don’t take flight, someone else will, the Lord wants…

Sometimes the hardest things to see are the most obvious. Could this be one reason why the disciples had such a hard time recognizing Jesus in his post-resurrection appearances? There is a story told about a man in West Berlin who worked in the eastern sector of that divided city.…

In the museum of modern art (MoMA) in New York City, an elderly man sat before a painting by one of the greatest of modern artists. The man was obviously highly elated. Over and over he kept saying, “At last, I’m in my rightful place. I’m in my rightful place.…

The central character in John Steinbeck’s novel “The Winter of Our Discontent” is a grocery clerk whose life is filled with discontent. He’s not happy with himself. He’s not happy with others. He’s not happy with life in general. One day, as he is routinely checking the groceries upon the…

There is the story of a man who was worried so much he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown that he decided to see a psychiatrist. “What’s you problem?” the psychiatrist asked. “Actually, I’ve got two problems,” the man replied. “My first problem is that I don’t think…