I am really excited to be with you for another year of interim ministry. I am very much looking forward to what we have coming up! Most of our work together in the next months will revolve around three overlapping tasks. First, we will be preparing for the developmental ministry that will follow my interim ministry. This ministry will last between five and seven years. It will be designed with...
as preached at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, Museum District campus, August 25, 2019 When I was a kid, maybe in second grade, I was given a homework assignment. I was told to make a diorama of the water cycle. How many of you have had a similar assignment at some point in your schooling? It is a pretty familiar one. I proceeded with it as instructed. I got some blue paint. I...
as preached August 11, 2019 at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, Museum District campus This morning’s sermon is a bit unusual. It does not have a single message or a unifying theme. Instead, it consists of my responses to questions from members of the congregation. Thirteen different people submitted questions and in the next twenty minutes or so I will attempt to respond to...
We spent an afternoon at about 20 minutes outside of the center of Angoulême. It has a long history. The family who built it first occupied the site in the late 10th century and have resided in it continuously since then. They claim to be one of the oldest families in France and the family archives certainly suggest that. The château is privately owned and operated. We arrived late in the...
We left Paris for a week in Sers, a small village outside of the southwestern city of Angoulême. We will staying with our friend Gilles Perrin and Nicole Ewenczyk. They just finished building a country house and studio there. It is so newly constructed that all of the furniture is yet to arrive. Everyone gets their own bedroom but I get to sleep on the floor. Here’s the list of my blog posts in...
Yesterday was one of the hottest days on record in Paris. It was officially 108 degrees Fahrenheit. I suspect that on the streets, with all the heat bouncing up from the cobblestones and concrete, it was a lot hotter. The heat was made worse by the fact that it was the third day in a row where temperatures had peaked at over 100 and not fallen below 80 or so at night. This meant that the inside...
Last December Mark Lilla published an article in the New York Review of Books titled “Two Roads for the New French Right.” It discusses intellectual currents in French amongst the Right, specifically amongst people about my age or younger. According to Lilla, they represent something new. They are more concerned with climate change and more critical of capitalism than their elders. Some of them...
It has been a week and a half since Donald Trump was elected President. In the past ten days he has begun to make clear the direction of his Presidency. He has articulated a plan for his first hundred days and started to make political appointments. The agenda of his administration is a hard right agenda. Here are ten things I expect from it: 1. President-Elect Trump has made it clear he is...
preached at the First Parish in Cambridge, Unitarian Universalist, June 28, 2015 I have both the great fortune and the great misfortune of being in First Parish’s pulpit this morning. I have the great fortune because this has been a historic week in which we have seen the arc of the moral universe bend more than slightly towards justice. The Supreme Court voted to legalize same sex marriage...
A little while ago I posted a summary of my carbon footprint and noted that my New Years resolution was to spend an hour a week trying to do something about climate change. The main thing I have done since then is think about the sources of my carbon footprint and reflect upon ways in which I can reduce it. It is apparent that the major source of my footprint is transportation. My lifestyle...