Spirit Gives Birth To Spirit

   Do people outside our religions also have a connection with God?  Can they teach us something about God?  Whether we are Jewish or Christian or Muslim or Universalist or Hindu or pagan or whatever else, I believe multitudes of people from all walks of life, and faiths from all over the world and throughout history, have or have had this connection.  And,  much more importantly , they can teach us facets of belief and practices and concepts that we may not find in our own little tribes.  And Jewish scripture and the Old Testament recognized that people outside our tribes do indeed have a connection with this same God. Yep. It's in there. In the Pentateuch. And Jesus knew it.     Melchizedek, king of Salem, was a mysterious character in the story of Abraham's life in Genesis 14.  He appears just before God's blessing of Abraham.  In chapter 14, Genesis says, "After [Abraham's] return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodo

The bible has a long tradition of wilderness experiences.  When Moses was young, he killed an Egyptian slave-driver and fled to the wilderness in Midian.  When he was out shepherding the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro, he encountered a "burning bush that was not consumed." The still small whisper in the quite of his soul he recognized as God told him he was in the presence of the holy. From the bush God gave him instructions to go back to Egypt and free his people.  God told him the Israelites will listen to him if he tells them "I am who I am" (translated Yahweh) sent him.  It was the Israelites' introduction to the name God gave himself.  "I am He who is."  This became a sacred name for them, to the point that they would not spell it out in writing.  Moses returned and freed his people, setting a reoccurring theme in Israel's history of a return from bondage to freedom. In Genesis 21, Abraham sent Hagar into the wilderness to protect her

    Sunday mornings have become a great source of sadness for me.  My wife is the worship leader at a church in a small town 1/2 hour north up the expressway.  We used to get up at 6 and she would get ready and I would get our baby girl ready.  Then she would leave to go practice with the worship band and I would follow.  My two year old in the back seat, we would race through the curves in the country road in my stick shift as we listened to music, just me and her.  Then I would drop her off in the nursery and go write while we waited for the service.  I would come back and pick her up at the start of the service and we would listen to her mom sing worship.  I would stay for the service.  Afterwards we would all go home and take a long nap in the afternoon.       None of that happens any more. Now my wife and daughter go up themselves.  Sometimes I follow later and drive a half hour just to rattle around at the cafe down the street from the church, working on my books and writing.

    When I was younger, I fell in and out of love with girls from high school through college and into my late 20's.  But it wasn’t love. When the initial exciting honeymoon period faded, I dropped the relationship like a bad habit. As soon as there was conflict or I saw something I didn’t like, I headed for the door.  And I was happy to be free again.  Until I realized I was lonely again, and started searching for someone else.  Finally in my late 20's, I stopped looking.  The minute I stopped looking, I was confronted with the young man in the mirror.  I didn't like what I saw. But I knew there was some good in me: I knew there was something of value. I had been writing poetry since I was in middle school.  I started to see myself poured out on those pages.  I looked at myself in depth.  I could see how I saw the world.  I wrote my feelings into concrete form.  I saw them on the page and I could see myself on the page. I began to grow. My spiritual journey began to take

     My dog died a week ago on a Monday.  It left this incredible hole in me.  I have spent hours on end sitting at the gas station chain smoking, trying to fill the hole. But this hole is much bigger than my dog.  When I got Izzy as a lonely bachelor of 29, I really had no concept of what love really was.  I cared for this little Australian Cattle Dog mix and she soon taught me to get outside of myself.  She showed true unconditional love for me, as I am, not as she would have me be, and we went through repeated hard times together as I struggled with an illness that has dogged me since I was seventeen.  She stood by me when other people couldn’t and in everything she did, she just wanted to please me.  Dogs all want a job to do.  Her job became to support me emotionally - to always be there at my feet to pet.  And to clean up after my sloppy eating.  (She loved both parts of her job equally.)  But it has dawned on me that I developed this deep mutual trust with her because of what sh

      This is not a story about a man being vomited out of a fish. That wasn't central to the original story when it was passed from generation to generation in fireside chats. This is the story of a prophet named Jonah. But it is actually the story of a nation.       There was a young man named Jonah. He was probably a little off his rocker. Pay no attention to if he existed or not: it doesn’t matter. It is likely, however, that he was an actual person because the book of Jonah begins that he was the son of Amittai.  Whenever the Hebrew scribes included a genealogy, they were trying to establish that this was a real person in history.  But that doesn't mean we have to believe the events in the story were literal.  I've seen many debates over how it is possible Jonah was swallowed by a whale and survived.  They miss the point of the story. Instead, this is a story of an average guy who was later called a prophet.  He felt that he heard the "still small whisper in t