Before we left on our whirlwind trip to France two weeks ago, Anne and I had to confront the fact that we hadn’t finished doing everything that needed to be done before we left. For example, I never got around to making a proper packing list, which was a little stressful. I tried to make it better by reminding myself that people…

Dear Friends, I loved hearing from Rabbi Michael Lerner on Sunday. Rabbi Lerner is a person of great wisdom and insight. His words have had a profound impact on people from the streets of Berkeley to the White House, and it was a deep privilege to have him in our pulpit. One of Rabbi Lerner’s ideas that I find particularly attractive is…

Dear Friends, This Sunday we are welcoming Rabbi Michael Lerner to our pulpit. Rabbi Lerner is the editor of Tikkun magazine and is the author of several books on the intersection of spirituality and progressive politics. He is a spiritual leader of international repute, whose message resonates with folks of all different faith backgrounds. After celebration, Rabbi Lerner will be leading a…

Friends, I’ve taken a few days off to spend time with some friends from Scotland who are visiting (you may have seen us wearing kilts on Sunday), so my remarks for this week will be brief. In lieu of a regular weekly column, I’d like to recommend a film I’ve seen recently. The Chorus (Les Choristes) is a French film made in…

Friends, At the beginning of the manse renovation project, I told myself that it would be fun, on occasion, to share pictures of the remodeling progress in my weekly Contact space. So far, it has happened only once; this is mostly because the work is progressing at so dizzying a speed that I missed what I’m sure would have been a few…

Dear Friends, Geneva is my favorite city. This may come as no surprise to those of you familiar with my fondness for John Calvin and the history of the Reformation, but there was a decade (between 2001 and 2011) during which I visited Geneva six times. Two of those visits were intentional pilgrimages, when I sought to engage myself spiritually, not just…

On Sunday, Talitha preached a sermon on baptism in honor of “Baptism of our Lord Sunday,” a little known church festival that follows epiphany each year. Each January, when I hear the story of Jesus’ baptism, I know that Christmas is finally over. It’s a bittersweet annual moment made somewhat easier at Montclair Presbyterian Church by the presence of the Pacific Boychoir,…

By now you’ve probably heard that over the weekend a group of well-armed, self-described “patriots” decided to occupy a wildlife interpretive center near Burns, Oregon as a way of protesting federal land management policies in general and, in particular, the prosecution of two ranchers who–taking wildfire mitigation practices into their own hands–set fire to several dozen acres of protected wilderness area. The…

Friends, As Christmas draws nigh, I thought I’d use my Contact space to share one of my favorite Christmas songs with you. The song is called “Cry of a Tiny Babe” and it was written by the Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn (who you may remember from earlier in Advent when I shared his song “Last Night of the World” with you). The…

On Tuesday, a tweet washed up over the digital transom of the slow and somewhat unevenly-keeled rowboat that is my presence on social media–a platform where (it seems to me) everyone else is tooling around on the electronic equivalent of speedboats while I pull on oars that would be happier in an era of print media. But at any rate, here’s what…