32.3 Summer
Creation, the Sixth Day: One and Many in Both God and Human Beings
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What was the author of Genesis thinking in setting the stage for these kinds of false dualisms? And why the confusion of grammar and gender and singular and plural?
Notes on the Election, Climate Change, Thanksgiving, Standing Rock, and Preparing for Revolution: A Two-Part Series
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Before jumping into or back into the fray, take some deep breaths and prepare ourselves to be deployed. Like it or not, by being alive in 2016 a stunning responsibility has landed in our laps. We are at a point of fulcrum in history.
31.4 Fall
The Sixth Day of Creation: Dominion and the Factory Settings
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Over the past year, I preached a sermon series on the Torah’s seven days of creation at First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn, NY. In this series I lifted up the images of natural beauty and ecological abundance in this passionate text—a text that is too often claimed by (and ceded to) hard-line creationists and climate change deniers. Far from the conservative politics that such voices promote, I see the Genesis text as a call for human humility and environmental stewardship. It highlights the gorgeous and fragile gift we have been given in our planet Earth, celebrates its diversity, and casts humans as merely one thread in its living web. My interpretations in this series are partly my own midrash and partly the insights of traditional commentators. The following article is adapted from a sermon I delivered on the sixth day of creation, the creation of land animals and humans.
The Innocence of God: The Third Commandment Building the Religious Counterculture
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OF ALL THE old-and-dusty-sounding commandments in the Hebrew Bible, the commandment to not “take God’s name in vain” seems oldest and dustiest. We can’t help but picture nuns rapping school kids on their knuckles for the sin of swearing. And yet if we look deeply into this commandment, it’s not about four-letter words at all. This commandment is truly among the most radical. It calls us to earn our own rewards and admit our own failings without dragging God into it.
First Comes Love: Building the Religious Counterculture
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That gay marriage went from impossible to inevitable in this country in such a short span of time is a testament to the wonderful suppleness of the human heart. Through this process we all got to witness firsthand how societies, like individuals, have the thrilling ability to change from the inside. It has been breathtaking to watch as, household by household, gay people have become human in the eyes of the American public.
2015
The Audience of the Future: Building the Religious Counterculture
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Secular society is narcissistically stuck in the now. As progressives, we must focus instead on how we’ll be viewed by future generations.
2015
Lessons from the Shadow Side of Football: Building the Religious Counterculture
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To uproot our most entrenched institutions, we need a countercultural vision. The story of professional football illustrates why.
2015
The Banality of Environmental Destruction
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The things we will need to change to keep the earth safe are the very things closest to us, dearest to us, and most rooted in our traditions.
2015
A New Take on the First Commandment: Building the Religious Counterculture
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If we worship anything, it should be the power of liberation. The first commandment warns us away from wealth, status, and other false gods.
2014
Confronting the Corporate Expediter: Building the Religious Counterculture
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So I’m at a dinner party chatting with the guy sitting next to me, and he asks me what I do for a living. I tell him all about ministry, and then I ask him what he does for a living. “I’m an expediter,” he says. “An expediter,” I say, “I’ve always been curious about this. What exactly is an expediter?”
“I help companies do their business.
29.3 Summer
The Shadow Side of Freedom: Building the Religious Counterculture
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When did liberal religion start valuing personal autonomy over collective values of love and justice? We need to prioritize a new kind of freedom.
2014
Loving-Kindness to the Thousandth Generation
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Violence can take on a life of its own, rippling in unexpected directions. But our religious traditions teach us that love proliferates exponentially more.
2014
Devil’s Advocate: Building the Religious Counterculture
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I have to admit: I enjoyed {title}Atlas Shrugged{/title}. Something about it resonated, even for me, on the far opposite end of the political and religious spectrum.
2013
Fierceness and Reverence: Building the Religious Counterculture
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As religious people, we face our lives head on, knowing that our time is short here. And so we live with a little fire and intensity, fierceness and reverence.