Category: The Cultural

  • Has Christmas Lost its Power?

    Going through Christmas this year I began to wonder if Christmas has lost it’s power as a symbol and sign in our culture today. Symbols can lose power over time and when this happens there needs to be a reformation of those symbols and signs, or a letting go of them. This is in part…

  • Interfaith Clergy Letter to the Editor in Clark County

    (This is a letter a group of us from Clark County wrote in response to some of the controversy surrounding September 11th this past week. We submitted it to our local papers which did not pick it up so I thought I’d post it here.) This year, a small group of clergy in Clark County…

  • There is No Pure Christianity

    A long while back a friend of mine wrote on his twitter this remark: There is no pure Christianity, it is all syncretist. And I agree with this point, all Christianity today is influenced to a smaller or larger extent by outside forces. I’m not sure it’s ever been any different to tell the truth.…

  • The Wounding of Creation

    This morning someone in our meeting requested prayer for the oil spill and during the time of prayer the image of the oil spill came back to me in a powerful way. I envisioned the hole where the spill gushes out as a seeping wound. Creation is deeply wounded, and that wound continues to gush…

  • Creating Liberated Spaces: Some Thoughts

    Back in February, and on the dawn of Transfiguration Sunday, about 30 (?) folks piled into a Southeastern Portland home to share in a conversation being facilitated by two out of towners Eliacin Rosario-Cruz (Seattle) and Mark Van Steenwyk (Minnesota). The crowd was made up of a number of men and women from a variety of…