Friends, I hope you will take some time while reading this week’s Contact to make note of the information on our Winter weekend retreat at Mission San Antonio in the Santa Lucia Mountains. So far, these seasonal retreats have been profoundly moving for me. The ability to revisit the same sacred place in the heat of summer and in the transitional weather…
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Posts by Ben Daniel (Page 2)
Friends, For years I have dreamed of taking a group of folks on a series of four retreats—one for each season—to a place called Mission San Antonio de Padua. The mission itself dates back to 1771, and was founded by Junípero Serra in the Mountains between the Salinas Valley and Big Sur on the land of the Xolon Salinan people. I wanted…
Friends, On Labor Day I decided to make Baba Ghanoush. I realize this isn’t traditional Labor Day fare, but on Thursday of last week I’d enjoyed an extraordinarily tasty plate of the lovely Middle Eastern eggplant-based dip while sharing a wonderful meal with dear friends, and so, when on Saturday a neighbor stopped by with three eggplants for me, I decided it…
Friends, I went to seminary at a time (the early ’90s), in a place (Princeton, New Jersey), and among people (mostly White, middle-class Americans from the Eastern Seaboard), in which and for whom the ideal Presbyterian minister was urbane, erudite, cultured, well-read, and well-versed in the arts; a clergyperson was to be politically liberal but not radical and theologically modern without losing…
I’m writing this on Tuesday morning, and I have to say I’m still feeling the positive energy afterglow from the weekend’s Church Leadership Retreat. I don’t have the space here to recount all that was wonderful about the weekend twenty of us spent together at the Jesuit Retreat Center in Los Altos, but more than anything, I believe the retreat was important…
Friends, As a Presbyterian minister part of my job involves being active in the life of the denomination to which our congregation belongs. This obligation is actually written into the ordination vows I took almost 29 years ago, and, for the most part, it has been a pleasure to see what’s happening beyond the confines of the local church, and to be…
Friends, For several months now I’ve been letting you know about an upcoming series of retreats that I will be leading at Mission San Antonio in the mountains between the Salinas Valley and Big Sur, and now the time has come for us formally to start taking sign-ups for the first retreat. Signing up is easy. Just send me an email (ben@mpcfamily.org)…
Dear MPC, I wanted to write this letter to share with everyone in the hope of conveying the deep, deep gratitude I feel for the ability to join you at MPC@Tahoe. Even if you weren’t able to join us – or camping isn’t your thing – if you contribute even in the smallest way to MPC, you were part of making…
Friends, Two weeks ago, as I was walking home from my office, I looked down and saw what I assume is a hummingbird nest, and that little bit of discovered serendipity could not have come at a better time for me. That week, I had been spending too much time doom-scrolling on Twitter, grieving over mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde and…
“I do think this “religious” aspect is not in the marketplace of news. I do not want the term ‘Christian’ in our society to be associated with criminalizing those who differ on issues of morality. We should use persuasion, not force, let alone violence. Christians need to speak out now.” ~ Margaret As a white Christian woman, I find the Supreme Court’s…