"Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you that makes everything his own and says, "My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body." Learn the source of sorrow, joy, love, hate. Learn how it happens that one watches without willing, loves without willing. If you carefully investigate these matters, you will find him in yourself."

Hippolytus (c.170-c.236)
quoted in "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong: "A Charter for Compassion"

What religion was supposed to be about, and why it should be spread around the world (21 minutes.)



As she accepts her 2008 TED Prize, author and scholar Karen Armstrong talks about how the Abrahamic religions -- Islam, Judaism, Christianity -- have been diverted from the moral purpose they share to foster compassion. But Armstrong has seen a yearning to change this fact. People want to be religious, she says; we should act to help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help her build a Charter for Compassion -- to help restore the Golden Rule as the central global religious doctrine.

Words Needed for Today and the Future

"The history of the church is littered with the shells and remnants of purist and separatist movements, as is the world. From Babel to Utopia, from the Zealots to the Taliban, from the House of Shammai to the Sanctified Brethren — such efforts to lift and separate more often fall and dissipate. The church will always be a hospital for sinners, a field strewn with weeds and wheat; it is not the task of one sinner to judge another, nor the task of anyone to weed the field. We are instead called to grow and bear fruit — and it is the fruit that will be gathered in the harvest, not the stalks, be they weed or wheat."

Tobias Haller (BSG) is the vicar of St. James Episcopal Church, Fordham. The above quote is taken from his excellent blog, "In a Godward Direction", which really takes one inside the divisions of the Anglican community. Tobias is also responsible for the "Nunc Dimittis" music and video that you can link on this page on your left.

Who I Pray For

Sometimes while doing what I call praying, after remembering those near and dear, living and deceased, as well as praying for a world of cruelty coming apart at the seams, and, of course, loading up on personal needs and desires, I just sit quietly for awhile, and passing images of people appear.

I.
Early one Saturday morning before dawn, I was leaving my building to go to work. Walking through the lobby, I saw through the glass front door two young men walking by, looking behind them and laughing----sneering, really. Nothing special, I thought, just refugees from the four o’clock bars. I see a bunch of them every Saturday morning.

Stepping out onto the sidewalk, I looked first to my right and then to my left. There I saw a woman in her early twenties, bent over the sidewalk, picking up clothes and other personal belongings that someone had thrown into the street from a window up above, and putting them into the backseat of her car that had the motor idling.

She looked up and saw me looking at her---for just an instant--- then we both averted our eyes. Fortunately for her discomfort and mine, my cab came quickly. But her eye contact, like an electrical charge, stayed with me the rest of the day.

Even though it was more than twenty years ago, I went through the same low point, coming “home” to find my belongings out on the street. I know the embarrassment, the humiliation, the anger, the sadness---all the while knowing the neighbors and strangers passing are watching the whole scene. I will never forget that moment and neither will she.

II.

Several years ago, a girl who had been a student in our grade school for the entire eight years and was in her freshman year in high school, suffered a heart seizure and died while jogging in her gym class: Just fourteen years old and gone. The pastor and I officiated at the wake at the funeral home, the ritual that begins the process of saying good bye to a loved one and, hopefully, helping with a bit of healing.

Standing up in front by the casket, the priest prayed and read from scripture, while I chanted psalms of the wisdom and mercy of God’s providence. The family, seated in the first row, huddled closely together, attempting to be strong for each other. At the end of the row, next to the family, sat a thin, fragile girl, also a freshman, who was the deceased’s best friend-----judging from the fact that the two were in nearly every photo in the collage at the funeral parlor, life-long friends. She was devastated and literally shaking. We made eye contact ever so briefly. She had the look of a frightened, trapped fawn or young rabbit, perhaps. The next day, at the funeral, she sat at the end of the first pew with the family, right next to the casket. Fourteen years old and your very best friend is taken from you.

I think of that young girl often, wondering if she’s managed to put her life back together and what she thinks of the wisdom of God.

"There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful."


Howard Thurman

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My new psalm for solo voice on Thom P. Miller Music