Today was a day that it was a good to have a back-up plan. We went to Barcelona with the intention of taking the train to Zaragoza. Once we got there I found out that we needed to have our passports with us in order to buy non-regional train tickets. Of course, we didn’t have our passports on us so we had to change plans. We ended up taking a regional train to Tarragona, which is where we were...
as preached at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, May 1, 2022 I want to begin by thanking everyone who contributed to last night’s fundraiser. It was a wonderful celebration of First Houston and our musical program. Thanks to Dr. Rocke and Chelsea, the choir, the string band, Paige Powell, Jim McGehee, Karoline Mueller, Traveler, the Clear Creek Girls, Rev. Scott, Alma, Tawanna...
I’m excited to announce that, with Sade Perkins, I’ll be a Crossroads Project Fellow for 2022-2023 for a project we’re doing on “Religion in Houston’s Pan-African Community.” We’ll be facilitating a series of public conversations and oral histories with community elders about the relationship between their justice work and religious beliefs and spiritual...
In this sermon I ask, what makes a place a holy place?
The policy choices that led to the winter storm disaster in Texas are a moral evil. In this sermon, I argue why.
Like a deer crying for water,
my soul cries for You, O God;
my soul thirsts for God, the living God;
O when will I come to appear before God!
My tears have been my food day and night;
I am ever taunted with, “Where is your God?”
This week, I must confess, I have been feeling more than a little tearful. It has been 154 days since I last preached a sermon to you in person. And I have been missing you. And I have been missing my life from the before times. And my family--other than my son this has been the longest I have gone without seeing any of them. And I have found myself struggling to live in the here and now.
This past Friday the Washington Post journalist Robert Samuels put out a simple eleven-word tweet. Over an image of the Post, he wrote, “Have mercy. Every story in this front page made m[e] gasp.” The articles offered a litany of woes: “Trump suggests delaying election;” “U.S. economy contracts at record rate;” “Mail backlog raises fears of delays in ballot delivery;” “DHS gathers ‘intelligence’...