The Sunday-school teacher asked her 10-year-old students if they would be willing to give $1,000,000 to missionary work for children and families in need. "Yes," they all screamed in unison. "Very good. Would you give $1000?" "Yes!" "Good. Would you give $1?" The class responded, "Yes," except…
Everyone has a sanctuary. If only in their mind. That space (or place) where we feel grounded, or at home in our own skin. Where there is nothing to prove and no one to impress. For me it is my…
Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. I know it's true for me. This week, a story from poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed four…
A little boy was having nightmares. The kind that require a momma's reassurance. (Dads, from my own experience, are typically not wired for nightmare duty.) So, to his momma’s room the boy went, "Momma, momma, I'm having nightmares." "Its okay honey," she told him, "here's what I want you to do. Go back to your…
This refrain will sound familiar. This isn’t the Sabbath Moment I planned to write (as I watch the images of the storm now thrashing Florida). On A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor tells a poignant story about Lake Wobegon life on the…
In the beginning there was only the holy darkness. In Jewish Kabbalah teaching it is called the Ein Sof, or the source of life. And then, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand, thousand things,…
It's déjà vu all over again. I just came in from watching the sunset. I'm in Englewood Beach (on Florida's west coast on Manasota Key), where I return every May to spend a few days with some old friends. It's a ritual. And…
I just finished a weekend with 40,000 of my closest friends at the Religious Education Congress, in the Anaheim Convention Center. It’s an annual recharge event. A place to tell stories, give and receive hugs, listen to music, laugh ‘till…
Honestly? I wanted to skip a week. I mean, I’ve got no skin in the game anymore. My Seahawks lost last week and are no longer in the football playoffs. Couldn’t even wear my 12th man jersey to church today.…
We went to the outskirts of Bourke (Mother Teresa writes), where all the Aborigines were living in those little small shacks made of tin and old cardboard. I entered one of those little rooms and told the man living there, "Please allow…