God’s shadow is all over the book of Ruth. It is in the obvious places—in the return of food to the land of Judah—but it is in Ruth’s loyalty. It is in Naomi’s laments. It is in Orpah’s farewell kiss. God’s shadow, for better and for worse is always on this earth. We can always feel God’s shadow; we cannot always feel Godself, God’s presence…

Imagine a world in which we never have to feel anything other than that incredible sigh of relief when we enter a room in which we know the people in that room truly understand us—a world in which we are all wise enough and enlightened enough, full of enough love to give everyone the grace they deserve, the way Jesus give us that unconditional grace…

Jesus suffered the human condition. And that’s what makes Jesus a perfect savior. God is perfect. But God wasn’t a perfect God for humankind until Jesus… until God experienced the human condition through Jesus…

This passage, in my reading, isn’t about magical healing powers. This passage is about the power of community, of togetherness; the power of trust. It’s about relying on one another in spite of missteps, in spite of misunderstandings. It’s about keeping one another uplifted during trying times…

And of course it’s not really about material things. It’s about status and power. It’s about feeling like we’re better than our fellow humans. It’s that corrupting earthly wisdom that does that  drives us to be this way, that makes us always want to one-up our neighbor… while Jesus calls us to uplift our neighbor, so that we are all on the same level...

Ted Chiang compares using programs like ChatGPT to write to “bringing a forklift into the weight room.” Without putting in the effort to really listen for the truth and listen for connection, we don’t work that compassion muscle. And we lose it. We lose the ability to empathize and connect...

If we want people to contribute to society, if we want people to contribute to us as a faith community, we need to work. Faith without works is dead. Church without works is dead. Democracy without works is dead. Love without works is dead...

James seems to believe that if we follow this perfect law, we can, indeed be perfect. We can be like Christ. Now, I always found comfort in the fact that perfection is an impossibility for us deeply flawed humans, and I still do… but what if we’re selling ourselves short? What if we really should strive towards perfection? What if we’re actually called to become perfect, and in turn to perfect this deeply imperfect world?

We have this loving, supportive, compassionate, quiet space in which we can give our brains a break from the outside world and we can give them rest and reset so that we can better hear the truth when it’s revealed to us. We can depend on one another and we can use this space to breathe...

We are all given unconditional love and grace. But if we don’t meet others with that same love and grace we’re given, what good is it? If we take those gifts and bury them or wrap them and hide them away, who does it help but ourselves? And what’s stopping us from spreading that love and grace around? Maybe a society that doesn’t care about us and makes us not want to care about others in it; maybe expectations that we’re scared we won’t live up to. There are so many reasons we might be tempted hide our God-given gifts...

The point is humility and understanding that until we bring about an earth as it is in heaven, we will all be guilty of adding to the inequality and sin of the world. Some of us will be more victims of this inequality than perpetuators; some of us are more perpetuators than victims. But we’re all guilty...

Some parables are meant to be taken as allegories. This is not one of them. You’re meant to imagine this literally. You’re meant to imagine a wise person building a house on a rocky, high ground, and you’re meant to imagine a foolish person building their house on sand just waiting to be taken by the tides...

Two Sermons for Independence Day from our annual combined service with the First Universalist Society of Hartland, on Matthew 13:44-46 and "Ghazal: America the Beautiful" by Alicia Ostriker

...we should do what we can to sacrifice some of our own needs and wants for the good of others, but certainly not our entire lives. And so when Vuillard ends his book with “martyrdom is a trap for the oppressed,” he’s saying that this is kind of uprising is futile. We cannot change the world for the better with the same violence and force that brought us to this place.

…so the more I thought of it, the more I realized, we would all probably do well, especially here in the very reserved area of New England, to let go of some of that shame that holds us back. It could be holding us back from asking for help, or from helping others.

“When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are [all] children of God…” Paul exclaims. ‘Abba’ is just the Gentile-Aramaic word for father, as said by the Jews. This is Paul saying ‘tomato, tomahto.’ Paul saying that when we, whoever we are, call to God in whatever language, we’re calling upon the same being, we’re calling upon the same Love…

…and so this day can feel painful for a lot of people. It can feel confusing and complicated. And so isn’t it kind of incredible, that we do have this ideal form of motherhood to always look to in Jesus?

…we don’t get anywhere without love. Once we are at the point in which we love one another, when we don’t feel a need to one-up each other, we can really connect and move forward… move forward to a world where a peaceful protest isn’t immediately met with violence… move forward to a world in which this true love of friendship, of connection, of really being one with each other, with humanity, is possible…

The pruning metaphor here is key—yes, pruning begets more fruit, but it means that in order to blossom and fruit, we need to cut back. We need to slow down, we need to figure what what’s really important in life, and what allows us to thrive…

Our faith will not make us immune to the cruelty of others, or to the unjust systems of this broken world. But it will guide us. It will show is right from wrong, even amidst the gray areas. Our faith will be there with the unconditional love of God, and the fact that Jesus, as the wounds on his hands and feet show, knows our every deepest pain and in the Holy Spirit, continuing to shepherd us along the right path in this strange world…