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…

Friends, As I was fighting writer’s block, looking for inspiration for this week’s contact piece, I came across the news that a certain prominent American politician had called for laws banning all Muslims from immigrating to the United States. Now, because this is a church publication I am not allowed to name said politician, lest by my criticism of him, we lose…

Now it’s my turn to say something about the “War on Christmas,” and by this I’m not referencing the use of spiritually-neutral seasonal greetings such as “Happy Holidays” (I’m content anytime anyone says anything nice to me), and this isn’t a rant against the commercialization of the season (now that Thanksgiving has come and gone I’m thrilled to see shops and streets…