Dear Friends, The season of Lent begins on Wednesday, March 6, a week from the publication of these words. Traditionally, the first day of Lent is called “Ash Wednesday” because for centuries Christians have marked the beginning of Lent by marking each other’s foreheads with ashes drawn in the sign of a cross. The ashes are meant to remind us of our…

Friends, Toward the end of last week, I had what may have been the strangest and most disturbing interaction I’ve ever had on social media. This is saying something, because I have strange conversations on Facebook almost every day, and disturbing encounters on social media, for me, aren’t exactly uncommon, either, but last week a former Sunday school teacher of mine threatened…

Friends, On Monday my phone jangled out the announcement of an incoming tweet from Alameda County’s emergency notification system. “It’s gonna be cold,” warned the words on my phone’s screen. “It might even snow.” I walked outside and had a look at the two volunteer daffodils that, over the weekend, had popped up in my back yard. They were in full and…

Friends, Over the weekend my family and I went to see the film “Mary Poppins Returns,” and it was wonderful. The storyline made a great sequel to the 1964 film, the acting was fantastic (with sweet cameos by Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury) and while I doubt any of the music in the new film will ever become culturally iconic in…

Friends, On Sunday we had the first in a three week series of conversations that are looking at transgender issues and the Church. It was a powerful class led by Rev. Janie Spahr and Rev. Kathy Ray. Both Janie and Kathy were informative, inspirational, and warm as they guided us through an encounter with material that is new to most of us, confusing…

Friends, I confess that I used to care a great deal about what people believed about the Winter holidays. As a Christian, I wanted people to celebrate Jesus’ birth at Christmas. The fact that some people would be observing Hanukkah this time of year was good too: even at my most conservative I was never much of a religious bigot, in fact,…

Dear Friends, During my sermon on Sunday I made a mistake. It was not a huge mistake as mistakes go (and it was an understandable mistake for a Protestant), but still I wanted to set the record straight: I confused Pope Pius the XI and Pope Pius XII. Sunday was Christ the King Sunday, and in the sermon I mentioned the fact…

Friends, At a congregational meeting after celebration on Sunday November 11, Montclair Presbyterian Church voted to declare itself a “Peace Church.” The vote came after two years of classes, conversations, and a lot of wordsmithery as a group of us crafted a statement that is even now earning praise from the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, an organization tasked with encouraging Presbyterians around the…

Dear Friends, Today is Halloween; it also is the 501st anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and one of the important distinguishing characteristics of that movement—now more than half a millennium in the making—is that the reformation is meant to be ongoing. By design, we Protestants are part of a church that is reformed and always reforming. One of my fondest hopes for…