Transfigure us: What religion might offer in the face of war and a million other crises

A helluva week.

War. Sanctions. Scenes of fleeing civilians. Uprisings around the world. We feel like we’ve been here before. Afghanistan. Syria. Iraq. Untold suffering. But this time, it feels like a slide toward oblivion. And we’re not out of a global pandemic. There’s still massive injustice to reckon with and heal. And the environment is becoming less and less hospitable to human life.

What can religion offer that’s not just some form of spiritual bypassing? Is there anything religion can do to transfigure this apparently damned world? In this mediation, I explore all that. And on Transfiguration Sunday in the Christian year, we ponder the meaning of an ancient story for modern life and the turbulent days we’re living through.

“Transfigure Us” is based on the Gospel of Luke 9.28-36. Transfiguration Sunday, February 27, 2022. . . .

Myth, Fairytale, and Dream | companions and guides to the inner work of finding and freeing our souls

An essay on myth, fairytale, and dream. Introducing my new epic poem “What’s Hid Beneath the Bones of this Great Tree.” Here’s the background on the poem as well as an overview helping you understand why mythopoetic material is the material of soul-work and how things like poems, tales, dreams and even artwork are necessary to help us consciously take the “journey of the soul.”

In the dark winters of my childhood, my mother would gather us around our wood-burning stove for story time. It wasn’t as long ago as that sentence makes it sound. I was born early in the 1960s at the feet of the great Rocky Mountains. Boulder, Colorado’s winters were cold; its social environment hot. My parents carried me to anti-war marches on their backs, and trundled me along when they walked door to door promoting progressive politics. I felt my mother’s grief when JFK was killed; I knew her despair when MLK and RFK were cut down, the way she tried to keep her hope alive in the midst of such loss. . . .

What seems like the end is never the end: what to do when you feel stumped

What do you do when you run into one roadblock after another? When you’re frustrated, stymied, stumped? Here’s a meditation on the importance of time and tenacity. It’s based on a reading from the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 6.1-13) and a poem, "Snowdrops," by the Nobel laureate, Louise Gluck. I preached the sermon on February 6, 2022 at Davis Community Church, Davis, California.

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Have you ever been stumped? Have you come to a place where you didn’t know what to do next? Out of ideas? Foiled? Thwarted? Frustrated? Stymied?

There’s not a human being who hasn’t run into a road block of one kind or another. Maybe a crossword puzzle stumped you. Maybe a relationship problem stumped you. Maybe you had a medical problem that thwarted diagnosis, a math problem that foiled your knowledge, a fork in a roadway that wasn’t on the map and left you scratching your head. . . .

What relevance does love have in this hateful world?

Love is a hackneyed and often over-used word in our culture. In this sermon I explore the relevance of the Bible’s great passage on love (1 Corinthians 13) for our lives today. What can this ancient writing on the nature of God as love offer us in this often hardened and hateful world? Come and see.

“God is . . .” A Sermon on 1 Corinthians 13.1-13. Davis Community Church. January 30, 2022

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Our reading today, or at least a few verses from it, is among the best known passages in the Bible. That’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s a good thing because, since it’s so well-known, it must be saying something that’s universal. It’s a bad thing because it’s so familiar that we’re likely to take its meaning for granted and miss what it can teach us about living well today. . . .

On Tyranny: The Christian Responsibility to Resist

A Martin Luther King Jr Day lecture by the Reverend Dr. Chris Erdman, Davis Community Church, Davis, California. January 17, 2022

1. Tyranny and Resistance

Tonight, one of my goals is to introduce you to the relatively new book by Timothy Snyder, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.” I’m not going to teach the book but rather to try to inspire you to read it and use it in the months and years to come so that we can do what Christians have often found themselves doing in the past—resisting those who have consolidated power in the few and often violently enforced their version of life on the many. Many of you already have the book. Some of you have just purchased it. Others will buy it. But I don’t want you just to buy or read it; I want you to do something with it. Tyranny is on the rise again in our world, and it must be opposed. But it must be opposed wisely, creatively, and energetically. . . .