Intersect

There’s a terrific show on AMC called “Into The Badlands.” It takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, and although the exact date is unknown, it’s obvious from the skeletons of interstate highway overpasses and the presence of cars that the show is based sometime after our current era—or perhaps in a parallel reality. The idea of before and after seems archaic to me lately. At any rate, guns are outlawed and territories divided into a series of fiefdoms run by Barons who control different natural resources. There’s a Baron who controls oil and gas, a Baron for river passage and transport, one who controls most of the grain supply. It’s an interesting scenario that allows the writers to explore some surprisingly existential questions. The philosophical and at times overtly religious nature of the show has surprised me because I initially tuned in for the terrific, sweeping, panoramic cinematography and jaw-dropping martial arts sequences (some of which are exhausting to watch at near...

Gracious God, you who are all the wisdom and grace of existence, you create through and for relationship. Before we took this form, we were in perfect relationship with you. In this form, we seek perfect relationship with you. After this form expires, as all things do, we will once again unite in perfect relationship with you. When the time comes for you to take physical form, we are formed and transformed until the spark of human birth graduates us to a new sense of being and a new sense of love for you. From the moment of our material birth, we form connections with our parents, the doctors and nurses caring for us, and all the aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, dogs, cats, and even strangers who will soon become family. We are carefully crafted for relationship, Holy One, from you, through you, to all that exists both seen and unseen. We celebrate all the people you have brought into our lives. For every story, every lesson, every shared laugh or tear, we thank you for the deep, pe...

Fragments from a diary dated to the time of the First Rip What follows is the official English translation of one of the most significant archaeological finds in history. Now referred to as “The Everyman Diary,” the text was overlooked for years. Discovered at a roadside antiquities tent in Machaerus (southwest of and across the Dead Sea from Bethlehem), the merchant claimed his daughter had found the diary in a small, unnamed, unexcavated, ancient village a few kilometers to the north. The diary was ignored for decades because its provenance and authenticity could not be established until recently, when work at the unnamed town revealed it to be the home of an influential religious movement organized just after the First Rip. Like the town, this sect has no recorded name, although a remnant remains today. This diary provides a rare glimpse into life just after the first paradigm-shifting Rip in the cosmos and the many ways people interpreted the event that changed our world forev...

God of endless grace, thank you. Thank you for one more chance to get things right. One more chance to tell you “I love you” and hear you whisper, “I love you, too.” One more chance to seek forgiveness from people I’ve wronged, and from myself because sometimes, the worst bully I’ve ever encountered is me. Thank you for one more chance to defeat the bullies in my mind, and in our world, merely by recognizing and becoming the love we need. I call you Holy and thank you for one more chance to fully surrender my life to you. Thank you for one more chance, one more day, one more week, one more month, one more year, one more life, one more resurrection. Thank you for making me new, over and over and over again. Thank you for the gift of patience as I learn to follow in the footsteps of our teacher, Jesus, the anointed one, who shows us your intimate, everlasting love. In the name of love and the manner of Jesus I will practice giving and receiving grace, mercy compassion, forgiveness and ...

  This article first appeared in Intersect on April 4, 2016. I’ve revisited and updated some thoughts for today's article. I’ve always found it useful to look for common threads weaving throughout the world’s religions. The intersection of ideas creates wisdom. At the very least, religious commonalities reveal that in our quest to understand our place in the universe , we quite often come to the same conclusions. One such common thread is “The Golden Rule.” Every religion, theistic or not, includes some variation of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Check out the chart below (click for a larger version): If most religious systems agree that we should be good and fair to each other, why then do we so often attempt to annihilate each other in the name of our religions? I have two theories about that. First, many of the wars fought for “religious” reasons were (and are today) political wars. On the ancient world stage, most of the states were theocracies in ...

God of endless wonder and surprise, fill us with your joy! Excite our senses with the sights, sounds, tastes, and calming touch of your presence. We need to experience you, our Lord of resistance. How else can we overcome the blathering bullies trumpeting hate to an all-too-eager crowd of lost souls? Without you, where is hope? Without you, how can we the people, lost souls all, lead each other to your light? So we plead to be with you, only with you , our love, our light, our song of life. We give thanks for you, our Holy, Loving God and hold you near, today and forever. Hold us near, too, as we traverse the slippery and obstacle-strewn path to a higher level of being; a greater sense of Universal Consciousness pervading all things. This higher state of being reveals enemies as friends and turns strangers into family. Help us journey together, leaving no person behind. Unite all people in love and understanding through the clarity of mind, body and soul that comes from r...

For the past few weeks, we've been talking about The Book of Psalms . This Sunday, as part of our new conversational style of worship, everyone was asked to think about a subject (something like tremendous joy or unbearable anguish; an aspect of God’s nature; thanksgiving to or frustration with God, or whatever else came to mind) and write one sentence summarizing their idea. We then wrote one response/exclamation to our initial thought, creating the first couple lines of a Psalm. We don't have pews or aisles of chairs in our sanctuary. We sit around tables of six or seven people who then assembled their thoughts together on a single page, in any order that struck them. It is surprising how effectively these separate pieces of poetry formed a Psalm.  I've assembled everyone's work into the following single Psalm. Thanks to everyone at The Current for your constant willingness to try new things, for your participation, and for your inspiration.  ...