Thanksgiving Interfaith Homily: An Image of Gratitude

Sometimes it is easy to feel gratitude. It’s easy, in fact, to be grateful for this moment. Our surroundings are graceful and inspiring. We’re sitting side by side with others who have come with gratitude on their minds. Comforting words (delivered in tasteful five minute bites), beautiful music, and a parade of cookies and conversation will help us experience our blessings. What more does a person need to feel gratitude rising in his or her heart?

September 27, 2009 The Mystery of Evil

"The myth of pure evil is the belief that evil exists separately from individuals, or that evil exists within
people as something like what we traditionally think of as an evil ‘force’, driving them to perform evil
acts. If pure evil exists, however, then how can we hold people morally culpable for their actions? Evil
is intimately linked to the problem of free will and determinisim: if we do not have complete free will in
our actions, how can we be held morally accountable? Further (and even more distressing), if evil does
exist, then wil we always be plagued by violence, war, genocide, crime, rape and other evils?"

(Starting with a reading from The Science of Good and Evil, M. Shermer)

August 30, 2009 Lucy Stone

Lucy Stone, the daughter of Francis and Hannah, witnessed the difficult life of a woman firsthand
on the farm where she was raised. This we know about Lucy’s mother: “When she married
Francis Stone, Hannah left the prosperous and cheerful farm of her parents and moved less than
eleven miles away. She would never again find time or opportunity to travel the short distance to
her childhood home. In linking herself to the tightfisted and cantankerous Francis Stone, she
entered into a lifetime of what her own children would later remember as almost ceaseless toil.”

August 23, 2009 Judith Sargent Murray

Judith Sargent was born into an affluent family in Massachusetts in 1751. Her father was a successful merchant. It is said she was the eldest of eight children. However, being eldest in age did not protect her from the customs of the day which dictated that girls were to be cultured in the domestic arts, rather receiving a formal education. Thus it was she learned needle crafts and household economy. Her formal education was limited to learning to read at the elbow of what she called a poorly schooled old woman. Judith wrested the remainder of her education from books in the family library. In the same years, her brother, Winthrop, was being tutored by a minister preparing him for a Harvard education.

August 16, 2009 Laughing, Swearing, Kissing August 16, 2009

There are times when being a minister brings an abrupt halt to all conversation. One of those
times is when someone swears. It goes something like this, “Expletive!” Long pause, while
speaker looks at me – often with a sheepish grin – “Sorry, I shouldn’t swear in front of a
minister,” the guilty person apologizes. Now, of course, all eyes are on me and it’s my turn to
hit just the right note of saintliness. Sometimes I respond with a weak joke, something on the
order of “You’re forgiven…this time.” I’ve ventured a brief version of the theological constructs
suggesting that clergy shares a simple humanity with everyone else. I haven’t yet tried
responding, with a dead pan: “That’s okay, I swear like a sailor myself.”

August 9, 2009, Turning to the Right: A Gift of Insight

At the age of 37, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist on the staff at the Harvard Medical School,
experienced a hemorrhagic stroke that flooded the left hemisphere of her brain with toxic blood.
Over the course of four hours she observed with a mix of horror and fascination, the loss of nearly all
her left-brain capabilities, and the death of the person she had known as Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor.
In the course of rebuilding her left brain functions over the next eight years, Jill Taylor discovered her
“right brain personality” and came to realize that she had the power to choose how she reacts in the
face of strong emotions such as the anger experienced by Sophie, regrets about her past, and fears
about her future.

July 26, 2009  Two Black Ministers, Two Generations

Was anyone surprised when Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested in his home for what
some call the ‘crime of being black?’ Was anyone surprised that the media outlets were
crammed with layer after layer of misinformation about what happened, who said what to
who, and how the arrest was issued? Was anyone surprised that issues of race, guilt, fear,
shame, and privilege were all jumbled up in those news reports?

July 19, 2009 From Governor to Heretic

He could have had a comfortable life as an adviser to Kings. He could
have had a long and illustrious career as Governor in Massachusetts Bay.
He could have lived to a ripe old age. He could have done any of those
things, but, instead Henry Vane chose to pursue his convictions with the
determination borne of righteousness.

June 14, 2009  Finding Common Ground

Is America moving from an era of interfaith tolerance to an era of interfaith hospitality?
That is the question that lies behind Gustav Niebuhr’s book, Beyond Tolerance. Traveling
around the country, and through many decades, Niebuhr is able to chronicle localized,
independent coalitions and organizations that are and have been working to improve
understanding between faith groups.