Pray, Praise and Worship: Setting the Inner Compass

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Monday, December 28, 2020

Setting the Inner Compass – Christmas

DECEMBER 23, 2020DECEMBER 23, 2020

Reading poetry is one of the ways some of us nourish our faith, a way we set or reset our inner compass and stay focused on the big picture, on the spiritual journey. I know that is true for me. In this monthly column, ‘Setting the Inner Compass,’ I share some of the poems I find nourishing to the soul.

In this column, I share four poems related to Christmas. Christmas is a social/cultural and spiritual celebration. Culturally, Christmas is a worldwide celebration of light in darkness, gift giving and gathering in community. Jesus may be part of these festivities or not. Often, he is just a prop. In my area of the country, church attendance has dramatically declined. The segment of the population who do not identify with a religious tradition, the spiritual but not religious, continues to grow. Yet the decline in church attendance and growth of the “nones” has had no impact on holiday festivities. Christmas lights abound on my non-church going neighbors’ homes. The need for a mid-winter celebration makes sense. It’s a good thing.

In the Christian household, Christmas is about more than gathering together, gifts, and colorful lights. It is about Jesus and incarnation, the word made flesh. I celebrate Christmas believing that the center of my tradition is not a book, or a doctrine or four spiritual laws but a person, a person who lived a life full in God. Christmas invites us not to look up but to trust the way of Jesus and look around at the sacred in the midst of life. Christmas invites us to make flesh in our lives the good news of liberation and compassion we encounter in Jesus’ life.

The four poems I selected for this column play with that theme. The first is a nativity prayer by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, a monk mystic and founder of the abbey of Clairvaux (1090 -1153). “The work of Christmas” is by Howard Thurman, author, philosopher, theologian, educator, and civil rights leader (1891-1981). I know little about the poem “Che Jesus” except that I like it. All I could discover is that it appeared in the form of a printed and anonymous sheet in a large factory center of the city of Córdoba, Argentina at Christmas 1969. The last poem, “Candlemas,” is by Denise Levertov. I found it in her wonderful anthology of poems on religious themes, The Stream & the Sapphire. By the time she died in 1997, Denis Levertov had published more than fifty volumes of poetry. She identified as a Christian late in life, at the age of 60. In 1989, she joined the Catholic church after moving to Seattle.

Merry Christmas.

Peace,

Dave

The Poems

The Nativity Prayer of St. Bernard of Clairvaux

You have come to us as a small child,
but you have brought us the greatest of all gifts,
the gift of eternal love.
Caress us with your tiny hands,
embrace us with your tiny arms
and pierce our hearts with your soft, sweet cries.

The Work of Christmas by Howard Thurman

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
      To find the lost,
      To heal the broken,
      To feed the hungry,
      To release the prisoner,
      To rebuild the nations,
      To bring peace among all,
      To make music in the heart.

Che Jesus Anonymous

They told me that you came back to be born every Christmas.
Man, you’re crazy!
…with the stubborn gesture of coming back every Christmas
you are trying to tell us something.

That the revolution that all proclaim begins first of all
in each one’s heart,
That it doesn’t mean only changing structures but changing
selfishness for love,
That we have to stop being wolves and return to being
brothers and sisters.

That we…. begin to work seriously for
individual conversion and social change
that will give to all the possibility of having bread,
education, freedom, and dignity.

That you have a message called the Gospel,
And a Church, and that’s us –
A Church that wants to be servant of all,
A Church that knows that because God became human
one Christmas
there is no other way to love God but to love all people.
If that’s the way it is, Jesus, come to my house this Christmas,
Come to my country,

Come to the world of men and women.
And first of all, come to my heart.

Candlemas by Denise Levertov

With certitude
Simeon opened
ancient arms
to infant light.
Decades
before the cross, the tomb
and the new life,
he knew
new life.
What depth
of faith he drew on,
turning illumined
towards deep night.

“The Nativity Prayer” by St. Bernard of Clairvaux is not copyrighted and found in many publications.

“Che Jesus” by anonymous

Rev. Dave Brown is a writer, creator/host of Blues Vespers, one of the PNW Interfaith Amigos and former pastor of Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Tacoma WA. He serves on the PCUSA Education Roundtable. (dbrown7086@aol.com).

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Unbound - Setting the Inner Compass- Advent 2020

DECEMBER 14, 2020DECEMBER 14, 2020

COLUMN

BY DAVE BROWN

Reading poetry is one of the ways some of us nourish our faith, a way we set or reset our inner compass and stay focused on the big picture, on the spiritual journey. I know that is true for me. In this monthly column, Setting the Inner Compass, I share some of the poems I find nourishing to the soul. My theme in this column is Advent. I’ll have a special Christmas column next week.

The poets I read respond to the Christian season of Advent in a variety of ways. Some pick up on the themes of the four Sundays in the season (Hope, Peace, Joy, Love). Others work with the theme of incarnation. Some pick up on the themes of pregnancy, birth, and new realities. Others don’t deal with the spiritual or liturgical rather they respond to the changes in the natural world, the coming of winter.

I have a long list of my favorite advent poems. The list includes:
Lisel Mueller’s poem, “Hope” and Emily Dickinson’s poem that shares the same name, Mary Oliver’s “Mysteries Yes,” “I looked up” and “Oxygen,” Madeline L’Engle’s “The Risk of Birth,” Linda Pasten’s “Noel,” Todd Outcalt’s “Advent,” “She Said Yeah” by Kathleen Norris and “The Mosaic of the Nativity” by Jane Kenyon. That is just a few.

Advent is a season of anticipation. Waiting for a birth, waiting for something new to be born. Personally, Advent 2020 finds me with a mix of anxiety and anticipation. I feel anxious and uneasy about what is happening in our polarized and potentially violent nation. I am anxious as well about what our community and church will be like in a post pandemic world. Yet, along with my anxiety, I have a deep sense of anticipation. I feel like something new is waiting to be born within my own life. And I feel like something new is going to emerge in the Christian household. Advent: a season of anxiety and anticipation. On to the poems.

The first poem by Edwina Gateley, captures that sense of anticipation, something new ready to emerge. Ms. Gateley is a remarkable woman. Check out her website. Edwina is currently writing, leading retreats for abused and marginalized women, and serving as “Mother Spirit” for Exodus, a program in Chicago for women in the second phase of recovery from prostitution.

In Mary Howe’s “Annunciation,” I wonder if the poet is writing in Mary’s voice, or as someone who has had her own mystical encounter with the sacred? Or both? Could it be anyone’s words? Finally, “On the Mystery of the Incarnation” by Denise Levertov captures mystery of the Christian affirmation that in Jesus, the Word was made flesh.

Peace,

Dave

Beginnings by Edwina Gateley

Beginnings—
just tiny stirrings
which disturb our even surface,
prodding us into new and different shapes…
claiming their place

on our horizons—
stretching us

where we would not go—
yet we must.
Driven by life forces
deeper than our dreams,
we dare to rise
and grasp towards
the new young thing—

not yet born—

but insistent—
like a tight seed bursting
for life,
carrying within it
all the power
of a woman’s
birthing thrust.

Annunciation by Marie Howe

Even if I don’t see it again — nor ever feel it
I know it is — and that if once it hailed me
it ever does–

And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as toward a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,

as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn’t — I was blinded like that — and swam
in what shone at me

only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.

On The Mystery of the Incarnation by Denise Levertov

It’s when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.

CREDITS
“Beginnings” by Edwina Gateley from her book, There Was No Path So I Trod One (1996, 2013). Used by the author’s permission.

Saturday, November 21, 2020

Unbound: Setting the Inner Compass - November 2020

NOVEMBER 20, 2020NOVEMBER 20, 2020

COLUMN

BY DAVE BROWN

We are approaching Advent. On the first Sunday of Advent, we light the candle of hope. My theme this November is hope. The Merriam Webster dictionary my parents gave me when I entered high school tells me that hope is “Desire accompanied by an expectation of or belief in fulfillment.” Hope is not wishful thinking or optimism. Wishful thinking or optimism is looking at reality through rose colored glasses, ignoring the negative, focusing on the positive. Hope, Christian hope, is not like that at all. It sees the world as it is: good and bad. Our hope is not based on glossing over or ignoring the hard stuff. Grounded in our faith, we see the brokenness and the harsh realities. Some days it is difficult to feel hope, but we go on. Trusting in the way of Jesus, in God and one another, we work together, believing a better day will come.

Last month, I had just one poem. This month four. The first poem is by Lisel Mueller. In 1939, at the age of 15, with her family, Ms. Mueller fled the Nazi regime and settled in the United States. This background informs her work as an artist. In 1997, Mueller won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Alive Together: New & Selected Poems. In 1981, she won the National Book Award for Poetry for The Need to Hold Still. Lisel Mueller died this past February.

The second poem, “How to Survive This,” is from Barbara Kingsolver’s wonderful new collection of poetry, How to Fly (in Ten Easy Lessons). One of my favorite writers, Barbara Kingsolver is the author of nine bestselling novels, most recently Unsheltered. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts.

The third poem is by Lynn Unger who was in my first poetry column with her poem “Pandemic”. She shares a brand-new poem in this column.

The last poem by Barbara Crooker veers from the theme of Hope to Thanksgiving, an appropriate way to close a November column. Living in the Pacific Northwest with its short, dark, November days, the closing line of the poem resonates with me, “Though darkness gathers, praise or crazy fallen world; it’s all we have and it’s never enough.”

Thank you to the publishers and to Lisel Mueller and Barbara Crooker for allowing me to share these poems with you.

Peace,

Dave

HOPE
by Lisel Mueller

It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
    it shakes sleep from its eyes
    and drops from mushroom gills,
         it explodes in the starry heads
         of dandelions turned sages,
              it sticks to the wings of green angels
              that sail from the tops of maples.

It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
    it lives in each earthworm segment
    surviving cruelty,
        it is the motion that runs

        from the eyes to the tail of a dog,
              it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
              of the child that has just been born.

It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.

It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.

How to Survive This
by Barbara Kingsolver

O misery. Imperfect
universe of days stretched out
ahead, the string of pearls
and drops of venom on the web,
losses of heart, of life
and limb, news of the worst:

Remind me again
the day will come
when I look back amazed
at the waste of sorry salt
when I had no more than this
to cry about.

Now I lay me down.
I’m not there yet.

Keeping Faith
by Lynn Ungar

It’s hard, these days, to know what to believe in.
I still pray to Goodness, Truth and Mercy,
but I am starting to suspect there are stronger gods.
and war brewing on the mountain.
Hope is still in the pantheon, but Optimism
slunk off a while back. Joy, and her sister Delight,
still come around, and I leave the door open as I can.
But sometimes its hard for the soul to keep faith.
I am trying to listen behind its high, anxious whine
to prayers of the flesh. Tea, says the body.
Rain, lavender, red leaves, pie.
11/5/20

Praise Song
by Barbara Crooker

Praise the light of late November,
the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.
Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;
though they are clothed in night, they do not
despair. Praise what little there’s left:
the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,
shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow
of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,
the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky
that hasn’t cracked yet. Praise the sun slipping down
behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves
that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,
Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy
fallen world; it’s all we have, and it’s never enough.

CREDITS

HOPE by Lisel Mueller © Lisel Mueller 1996, is from her book ALIVE TOGETHER and reprinted with permission of LSU Press.

How to Survive This is from the book: HOW TO FLY (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons) by Barbara Kingsolver. Copyright © 2020 by Barbara Kingsolver. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Keeping Faith © Lynn Ungar is used in UNBOUND with the permission of the poet. You can read more of Lynn’s poetry, or purchase her book Bread and Other Miracles, at lynnungar.com .

PRAISE SONG© Barbara Crooker is from the book Radiance (Word Press, 2005) and used with the permission of the poet.

Rev. Dave Brown is a writer, creator/host of Blues Vespers, one of the PNW Interfaith Amigos and former pastor of Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Tacoma, WA. He serves on the PCUSA Education Roundtable. (dbrown7086@aol.com).

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Setting the Inner Compass – October 2020

SAINTS

Reading poetry is one of the ways some of us nourish our faith, a way we set or reset our inner compass and stay focused on the big picture, on the spiritual journey. I know that is true for me. In this monthly column, Setting the Inner Compass I share some of the poems I find nourishing to the soul.

November 1st is ALL SAINTS DAY, a day in the church year when we remember those who have gone before us. It is a day when I remember the women and men through whom the light of God shined on my life. When I talk about saints in this context, I am not talking about those canonized by the church. I am talking about those people through whom God’s light has shined on our life, on our path. In the congregations I served, the Sunday nearest ALL SAINTS DAY was a time when we invited folks to share photographs of the saints in their lives who felt particularly present to them that Sunday. We would then take time in the Pastoral Prayer to name them and give thanks.

There are several poems that come to mind when I think of the Saints. I’ve used several of these poems in memorial service homilies including Mary Oliver’s “When Death Comes’’ with its great line, “I don’t want to end up simply visiting this world[1]”. Surely our saints are those “who don’t end up simply having visited this world.” I’ve also read a couple Jane Kenyon’s poems including “Notes from the Other Side” and “Let Evening Come”[2] which ends, “God does not leave us comfortless so let evening come.”

The featured poem this month is Maya Angelou’s poem, “Ailey, Baldwin, Killens, and Mayfield” known best by its opening lines, “When Great Trees Fall”. This remarkable poem takes the reader on the journey of grief, loss and hope. It begins with the way loss shocks our system and echoes in the world around us, the poem then moves through numbness, regret, and confusion. It ends with affirmation and invitation.

This All Saints Day I grieve and miss the ‘great souls’ in my life. I think particularly of Bill, my mom, Mark, Pat, and Greg. I think as well of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In the poem, Maya Angelou invites us to honor our saints by being inspired by them. It ends, “We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.”

Peace,

Dave

Note: My poem, “Yellow Bird Feeder “will be published October 28 on the Echoes of Panhala Facebook page. I invite you to check it out.

Ailey, Baldwin, Killens, and Mayfield (When Great Trees Fall)
by Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

“Ailey, Baldwin, Killens, and Mayfield (When Great Trees Fall)” from I SHALL NOT BE MOVED by Maya Angelou, copyright © 1990 by Maya Angelou. Used by permission of Penguin Random House LLC. All Rights Reserved.

[1] “When Death Comes” by Mary Oliver is found in her collection Devotions (Penguin Press 2017).

[2] The two Jane Kenyon poems I reference are found in her collection Otherwise (Graywolf Press, 1996).

Rev. Dave Brown is a writer, creator/host of Blues Vespers, one of the PNW Interfaith Amigos and former pastor of Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Tacoma WA. He serves on the PCUSA Education Roundtable.

Saturday, August 22, 2020

Unbound - Setting the Inner Compass

Reading poetry is one of the ways some of us nourish our faith, a way we set or reset our inner compass and stay focused on the big picture, on the spiritual journey. This monthly column, ‘Setting the Inner Compass’ is intended to share poems that nourish the soul. All of the poems resonate on their own. Sometimes, I’ll put poems together because they share a common theme.

In his book, Concern for the Church, Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner offered this memorable and well-known quote, “the Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist at all.” It is a bold claim. I believe that mysticism is an essential component of the future of Christian faith alongside social justice activism, theological reflection, and interfaith understanding. By mysticism I mean an openness to an experience of The Sacred/The Holy/God. Dorothy Day writes of one such mystical experience in prison. Howard Thurman, who was called the mystic of the civil rights movement, engaged in contemplative practice. He believed it was important to have experiences of God, which could be found within one’s self or in conversation with nature.

Thomas Merton was a mystic who wrote about a mystical experience in Louisville, not far from the PCUSA offices. It is found in his book, Conjectures of an Guilty Bystander:

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

There are poems about mystical experience and poems that invite us into those experiences. I share two poems in this column and suggest two others: “We are a Tribe” by Alberto Rios and “Feather at Midday” by Sr. Dang Ngheim.

Peace,
Dave

The Poems

“A Blessing” is based on an experience James Wright had while driving home one late afternoon with his friend Robert Bly.

“A Blessing” by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

from VACILLATION by William Butler Yeats

IV

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.

While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.

“A Blessing” is from Collected Poems © 1971 by James Wright. Published by Wesleyan University Press. Reprinted with permission.

from Vacillation: IV by William Butler Yeats is from The Collected Works of WB Yeats, Volume 1: the poems. © 1933 The MacMillan Company.

The Thomas Merton quote is from, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton and was first published in 1966 by Doubleday Image Books.

“We are a Tribe” by Alberto Rios is from his book Goodbye Mexico: Poems of Remembrance published in 2014 by the Texas Review Press.

“Feather at Mid-day” is by Sister Dang Nghiem from her book, A Woman’s Journey from Doctor to Nun published in 2010 by Parallax Press.

Rev. Dave Brown is the creator/host of Blues Vespers and a member of the PCUSA Public Education Roundtable. Dave along with Rabbi Ted Falcon and Imam Jamal Rahman offer programs about interfaith in the Pacific Northwest as the PNW Interfaith Amigos. He is the former pastor of Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Tacoma.

Thursday, May 21, 2020

SETTING THE INNER COMPASS: Introducing the Poetry Column

Reading poetry is one of the ways some of us nourish our faith, a way we set or reset our inner compass and stay focused on the big picture, on the spiritual journey. I know that is true for me. This is the first entry in a new poetry column on Unbound called Setting The Inner Compass.

In this monthly column, I will briefly introduce and share two or three poems. This column builds on the five-part National Poetry month series in April. In the wrap up to that series, I suggested using an approach similar to Lectio Divina when we read a poem for spiritual companionship.

The poems for May are by Vermont based poet, David Budbill. David’s poems are direct and clear. After he died in 2016, his obituary in the New York Times described him as “a people’s poet.” Quoting the journal Parnassus, the obituary said David was “as accessible as a parking lot and as plain as a pair of Levi’s.” David Budbill attended Muskingum College before attending Union Theological Seminary in New York. He graduated from Union in 1967 with a MDIV.

As someone who hikes on Mount Rainier every summer, the poem “Summer’s Here“ is descriptive of my experience as well as being a metaphor that reminds us that at times things that are worth doing are not easy. The last line is clear and true in many ways.

The second poem, “What We Need,” feels very connected to the realities of spring 2020. In the midst of resistance and engagement, we need to take time to nourish the spirit.

I added a third poem when I learned that Joy Harjo was appointed by the Library of Congress to a second term as U.S. Poet Laureate. A member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, she is the first Native American to serve in that position. A musician as well as a poet, Ms. Harjo is the 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate.

I am grateful and appreciative of the generosity of both publishers in granting permission to share these poems.

The Poems

“Summer’s Here”
by David Budbill

Summer’s here and we can hike the peaks again,
have lunch and tea on mountaintops, look down

on the backs of circling hawks and laze away
the afternoon watching blue-hazy, distant hills.

Come on! Give up those winter blues. Let’s go!
Grease up those boots, find that walking stick.

Get your lungs and legs in shape. And don’t forget
what Yuan Mei, said, two hundred years ago:

If you begrudge your feet some pain
you’ll miss ten thousand peaks.

“What We Need”
by David Budbill

The Emperor,
his bullies
and henchmen
terrorize the world
every day,

which is why
every day

we need

a little poem
of kindness,

a small song
of peace

a brief moment
of joy.

“Perhaps the World Ends Here”
by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So, it has been since

creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape

their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make

men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh

with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once

again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror.

A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse.

We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying,

Eating of the last sweet bite.

“Perhaps the World Ends Here” reprinted from The Woman Who Fell from the Sky by Joy Harjo (c) 1994, 1996 by Robert Alter. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

Rev. Dave Brown is the former pastor of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Tacoma, the creator/host of Blues Vespers and a member of the PCUSA Public Education Roundtable.

Pray, Praise and Worship

Monday, December 28, 2020

Setting the Inner Compass – Christmas

AN INTERACTIVE JOURNAL ON CHRISTIAN SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Poems

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Unbound - Setting the Inner Compass- Advent 2020

AN INTERACTIVE JOURNAL ON CHRISTIAN SOCIAL JUSTICE

Saturday, November 21, 2020

Unbound: Setting the Inner Compass - November 2020

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Setting the Inner Compass – October 2020

Saturday, August 22, 2020

Unbound - Setting the Inner Compass

Thursday, May 21, 2020

SETTING THE INNER COMPASS: Introducing the Poetry Column

The Poems

Revised Common Lectionary Readings for February 22, 2026

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