The anti-immigrant agenda runs amok in America and other parts of the world. Ideologues foment a xenophobic reimagination of the values of diversity and inclusion America has stood for, values based in our religious tradition (which itself has often been abused and misused to foster bigotry and violence against “the other.” In this sermon, I summon the biblical tradition and its influence on the American vision to challenge bigotry and urge us to reclaim the values that could make humanity great again . . . .
#ClimateEmergency: Becoming Wise and Finding Our Place in the Great Web of Life.
Just after the global #climatestrike and just before the United Nations Climate Action Summit, I preached the second in a series of sermons called, “Cooperation Not Exploitation: Finding Our Place in the Great Web of Life.” All meditations drawn from the creation poetry of Psalm 104, this sermon focused the ways God’s animal kin-dom can teach us as human beings to become wise again, participants in nature rather than exploiters of nature. The sermon began with a reading of the scripture texts while this video played in the background giving visual texture to the way the psalm imagines a human presence in and among the creatures of God’s animal kin-dom.
“Make Us Sapiens Again”
Second in the Series, “Cooperation not Exploitation:
Finding Ourselves in the Great Web of Life”
Psalm 104.24, 10-12, 17-22; Luke 12.24a
Thunberg and Monbiot: "Nature must be used to repair broken climate"
Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot testify that "the protection and restoration of living ecosystems such as forests, mangroves and seagrass meadows can repair the planet’s broken climate but are being overlooked.
"Natural climate solutions could remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as plants grow. But these methods receive only 2% of the funding spent on cutting emissions, say the climate activists.
"Their call to protect, restore and fund natural climate solutions comes ahead of a global climate strike led by young people on Friday and a UN climate action summit of world leaders in New York on Monday.”
Spread the word. The climate emergency is real.
WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE NOW? Six Stories. Seventeen Years. The Spiritual Journeys of American Millennials.
Here’s some information on a special interfaith screening and reception of the documentary WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE NOW?, at the Mill Valley Festival on October 6th at 2 PM and October 9th at 7pm.
What happens to your spiritual and religious beliefs over time? Seventeen years after the 2002 documentary WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE? in which six diverse American teenagers shared their spiritual struggles and aspirations, we revisit them to reveal how their beliefs have changed. In this new “before and after” film WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE NOW? a Catholic, Pagan, Jew, Muslim, Lakota and Buddhist offer their deeply personal faith journeys, life challenges, and evolving ideas about higher powers, life purpose, the nature of suffering, religious intolerance and death. They do so against the backdrop of a society in flux and amidst growing religious polarization and disengagement.
Designed to be a stand alone film, WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE NOW? is an invaluable addition to any discussion on religious diversity and millennial spirituality in America.
2019. Director & Producer Sarah Feinbloom. Producer Alex Regalado. 68 minutes. English.
Justice Matters Now | a meditation on ways to resource the justice we need
There’s a lot that needs to change outside us, but outer change requires inner and personal change otherwise it perpetuates the cycle of abusive power by those who are unconscious of what drives them. Revolutionary justice isn’t necessarily transformational justice. Without inner transformation, the oppressed can too easily become the oppressors and the cycle continues. To foster a transformational justice, we must face the internal biases, prejudices, assumptions, habits, and behaviors that arise from those unconscious biases. To grow the justice we need, we must grow ourselves.
The third and final sermon in the three week series: “What Matters Now.” It’s based on Ezekiel 47.1-12 and Luke 6.39-42.
Here’s the sermon . . .