Blog postings by our pastor Rev. Ben Daniel.
Friends, I don’t know if you have had a chance to see it or not, but a nativity display at a Methodist church in Southern California has been getting a lot of attention lately, because it depicts the Holy Family separated and placed in detention, in cells made of chain link fencing. I really like the display. It reminds us of an…
Dear Friends, On Monday I went for a walk,or, since I read a lot of Sallinger in my formulative years and I’m writing instead of speaking this, it might be more accurate to say that on Monday I went for a walk. It wasn’t planned. Anne is out of town, I took my kids to school and then dropped my car off…
Friends, By way of giving you a preview of the next sermon I’ll be preaching, let me say that November is an interesting month in that it plays host both to the day we Americans set aside for giving thanks, and Veterans Day, which originally was set aside to commemorate the end of the 20th century’s first global war. Most of us…
Printed below is an open letter I’ll be sending to the Oakland A’s. I expect similar letters to be sent to the Bay Area’s other professional teams in the near future. —Ben Dear Oakland A’s, Now that the World Series is underway, my mind is turning once more to baseball. My interest in the contest between the Astros and the Nationals is…
On Tuesday morning Anne and I took a quick inventory of our emergency supplies and determined that, while a visit to the grocery store to stock up on canned food might not be a bad idea, our family was not going to starve if, in its ongoing effort to prevent wildfires, PG&E turns off the power to our house. Our family might…
Friends, I have a world-class theological education, but there are certain responsibilities that fall unto me as a pastor about which I did not learn in Seminary. One such task in the removal of dead birds, especially when bidden by the detractor of a preschool. Montclair Presbyterian Church is the second congregation I’ve served that has a preschool onsite, and in both…
Dear Friends, On Wednesday of last week, Peter Pomerantsev—an English author about whom I had no prior knowledge—came to give an author talk in the Family Room at MPC. I attended the author talk because the subject matter looked interesting: propaganda. The author began his adult life as a producer of reality TV shows in Russia. During his tenure behind what once…
Friends, In my sermon a couple of weeks ago I mentioned a conversation between Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert that had been making the social media rounds. I was moved by the interview, which talks of faith and grief and hope. I wish the world was filled with more conversations like this. If more people spoke together with this kind of honesty…
A note: In 2003, or thereabouts, I got a contract from Beliefnet.com to write an article about the Fellowship (also known as the Family), a secretive, religious organization with which I had a brief affiliation while I was a student at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. When Beliefnet asked me to write about the Fellowship, I was an aspiring author, and…
Friends, For this week’s Contact installment, I want to mention two items, both of which are related to travel at MPC. First, I want to re-extend an invitation to anyone interested in traveling to Spain with me next April. On this journey we will be spending a week together learning about the convivencia, a period of several hundred years during which, under…