Finding Your Soul by David Anderson
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God is an Underground River
“God is an underground river,” Meister Eckhart said, “that no one can dam up or stop.” I love that image of God because it completely flips the dominant image of God “up there.” When we first imagine a deity, God is always “up,” always distant, the Sky God of nearly every ancient religion. Until gradually…
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U.S. Marines are Meditating? That’s Right.
How strange is it that the U.S. military is spending millions to teach Marines how to meditate? Still within churches and religious institutions we find enormous reluctance or suspicion around meditation. It’s an “Eastern” thing. To many American Christians, the notion of sitting there and “doing nothing” seems almost dissolute (even though Jesus praised…
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Church Without God
My publisher, Convergent Books, asked me to write a piece on a phenomenon called “Sunday Assembly.” It’s essentially church for atheists, a movement recently featured on NPR. It’s a curious spiritual development, one that ought to tell us why people are taking a pass on our version of “church.” Click the link and give it…
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Star-Crazed Days
I love the story of the family driving to grandpa and grandma’s for a Christmas get-together. As they passed the Episcopal church where a manger scene was in the yard, the five-year old boy asked about the meaning. “That is Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus, there in the manger,” the mother explained. A few…
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No Explanation Necessary
My sermon was very short this morning. I read two poems—two excerpts, actually. After hearing the long Lucan story of the nativity on Christmas Eve—with angels and shepherds and barns and tax registrations and long journeys into night—this morning we heard John’s story of the nativity. It’s an elegant, poetic eight words. “The Word became…
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God’s Christmas Kiss
It is Christmas Eve, the night when God comes for us, comes in the only way we could receive God-with-us. If the infinite God is to reach us finite humans, there will have to be some translation, some accommodation. And all the work will have to be on God’s part. There is an affecting story,…
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Luminous Darkness
Last night I hosted the staff Christmas party here at the rectory. In preparing our home for the festivities—which always includes a raucous round of Yankee Swap—I lit all the candles in the living room. Because the room is large and has no ceiling light fixture, we have a number of lamps scattered around. But…
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“I Expect Him Today”
Advent pulls in two directions. It recalls a “first coming” but only to awaken our senses so that we will not miss the “second coming.” I don’t go in much for the Second Coming. That’s almost completely because as a child I was taught to look for the Second Coming in literal form. Christ would…