• Prayers for healing, peace, and calm acceptance of the outcome for Eb Keller, Samantha Tuttle’s father
• Thank you, God, for the generosity of the St. Luke Church community. A love offering on Sunday brought in $313.50 to help defray the cost of Triennium for everyone going in July.
• Prayers for Tonya and Les Church as Tonya is in the recovery phase of treatment for colon cancer
• Prayers for the continued success of INSPIRIT
• Prayers for those who feel lost and forgotten
• Prayers for Mike and Kathleen Wilson as Mike finishes seminary and searches for a call where he can be all God wants from him now
• Prayers for Chris Schilling who has been hired as a hospital chaplain as part of his clinical pastoral education requirement for ordination
• Prayers for peace in all the world
• Prayers for Anna Storojen for healing of colon cancer
• Prayers of thanks for St. Luke’s new men’s group
• Prayers of justice and healing for all those who are victimized

  Prayers for our World

• Financial stability in the US and abroad.
• That the tensions in east Asia and Africa are calmed.
• For our nation as we seek solutions and preventions of violent crimes and mental illness.
• That we develop God-honoring answers to homelessness, hunger, and housing issues in Marin County
• For our leaders in Washington D.C. that they establish dialogue that has wisdom and compassion
• For those suffering at the hands of violence.

It wasn’t worry, gas pains or gas prices, it was much worse. It was CHANGE. I was changing and I could feel it deep in my body.

Change is something we each face at different times in our lives. I saw shocking evidence this week at the Rolling Hills gym. A woman with a loose and raggedy running style hobbled her way through a treadmill cycle. She looked miserable. It was hard to watch but I just kept staring. I was afraid she was going to slip and fall into the floor fan that she set dangerously close to her.

Judging by the faded snugness of her “Frampton Comes Alive Shirt”, and a pair of old and ill fitting shorts that said “JUICY” on her backside, I ascertained exercise was a recent change in her life. Her workout attire was wrong on many levels. Five minutes later I saw her sitting down and reading a magazine while watching “Family Feud” on television.

I had empathy for her. She was struggling with change. As was her gym wardrobe, but if she stays at it long enough both will transform.

Personal and community change is not easy. Why does it seem that when a change occurs in our life, we rarely feel good about it in the beginning? I am sure had I asked the woman at the gym, “How do you feel? ’You likin’ the changes?” Instead of giving me the thumbs up, I think she may have hoisted an entirely different digit.

Can the Bible reveal something about human change? Many would say the creation stories in Genesis are but poetic ways of expressing great human ideas. But if that's all it is, why bother? Who really cares? To the contrary the change in Genesis brings forth new life from the depths of turmoil and chaos. Genesis is not a geology or biology lesson. Instead it reveals a divine shaping and creating for all of life, beauty, and light in the darkness.

Creation, change, or a new understanding of a relationship does not come about smoothly, easily and peacefully. I wish it did. The woman at the gym in her faded and tight “Juicy” shorts wished it did. And for her sake, I did too. All too often change happens when our stomach is tied up in knots, we can’t sleep, focus or relax. We feel out of control, disconnected from people we care about, or an important relationship may need new boundaries. Our life has no peace.

But something else is happening here. There is some holy, spiritual other working in us, through us and beyond us. There is something outside of us, greater than ourselves at work.
I hope each of you can walk down the road of change with as much courage, grace and strength as you can draw upon. And remember, you may feel all alone, but you aren’t. Others walk with you.

Peace,
Rev Dan

It might be few years before we read it together, but I decided to get the jump on it and reread. It had been awhile.

During my perusing I came across a beloved line that I hadn’t read in years. If you do not know the story or have never heard of “Winnie the Pooh” then I can do absolutely nothing for you on this one.

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you." ~A.A. Milne, from Winnie the Pooh.

“Being sure of someone” is vital for human relationships to not just survive, but thrive. Being sure of one another is how we build love and trust. Without love and trust, then we have no relationship.

When I marry a couple, the moment comes when I ask them for their wedding rings. I say a blessing and then remind the couple, as well as the guests what the wedding rings symbolize. I say “Your rings are symbols of your love. They are whole and without end, simple, yet strong. To one another and the world, they proclaim your commitment to each other for life.”

Said another way, building love requires being consistent in our words and deeds and this is how trust is established.

A woman came over and asked, “you are a Minister?” I did a Homer Simpson to myself, “D’oh!” “Yes” I said. She had to first preface our conversation that she was “spiritual not religious”. I assured her I left my snake handling stuff in the car. Now that that was out of the way, she took a sip of a wine and asked me “What is the difference between a Baptist and a Presbyterian?” I was waiting for a punch line. None came. So I asked, “Are you a Baptist?” “No,” she said, and then went on to say how she didn’t like Baptists.

I didn’t ask what the Baptists ever did to her. I was about 45 seconds into my answer, and I could see by her eyes that she was hearing, “Blah blah blah.” I was just getting warmed up when she cut me off and said, “Thank you,” then moved on to taste a Pinot Grigio from Italy with hints of mint, celery and wild mustard.
So alas, she had asked a spiritual and a religious question, but was not interested in sticking around for an answer, or at least my answer.

Marin is a place where things religious and spiritual are of great interest. “Spirituality” has become a type of buzzword. We see manifestations of spirituality everywhere, from the workplace, collage campus, to the yoga studio.

I believe one way of talking with people who identify themselves as spiritual not religious and have little to no background, experience or practice in either, is before I open my mouth, I need to listen.

As a minister I spend much of my time in the spiritual and religious deep-end. If spirituality is like a swimming pool, then getting wet is required. Not everyone has to jump in the deep-end. We first start by sticking our toe in, then our foot, then we run back, then next time we are up to our knees.

Spirituality when we allow ourselves to truly live into the depth of its meaning is the longing for Transcendence and Intimacy. As a minister I appreciate and recognize both as essential qualities in faith. Transcendence is believing that life extends beyond ourselves, beyond how much money we make, or what people think of us, or that our teenage kids are embarrassed by the fact that we exist.

Intimacy is a core belief that deep within me, lives an essence that not even pollsters or advertisers can reach. Spirituality recognizes the link between the two.

The depth of spiritual expression within our religious life is the opening of our life to the beyond and a hunger from the within. Spiritual depth expressed in our religious traditions at the heart of it is about Transcendence and Intimacy. Growing in our faith isn’t about making our life a little bit better; it is the audacious belief that God can make us anew!

May it be so for you and for me.

 Rev. Dan

A beautiful post by Author Holly Payne, "Kingdom  of Simplicity" and "The Virgin's Knot".

Please read and let me know your thoughts.

Rev. Dan

I like Christmas. It is one of my most favorite times of the year. I like all the sentimentality and familiarity that is associated with the season. But all too often we are taken over by singing chipmunks, dancing snowmen and frenzied shopping, and this leaves us asking or crying for a more meaningful and lasting Christmas experience. Like Charlie Brown we all desire Christmas to have greater transformational meaning in our life. We long for more than expanded waistlines and January credit card bills.

Christmas as a spiritual experience is about opening our lives to the unimaginable becoming real. Ponder this for a moment? A baby being born to a 14 year old virgin doesn’t add up, knowing everything we understand about human biology. The Christmas story is by no means a biology lecture. Quiet the contrary. Having faith in a deeper meaning of Christmas asks that we have an audacious belief that a God can bring new life or a new way of being when all the logic and evidence says otherwise.

My wife and I live this reality daily. Seven out of the eight years of our marriage Laura has been battling breast cancer. Advancements in chemotherapies, radiation and target therapy keeps her alive and thriving. We live everyday of our life on the edge of modern medicine hoping and praying for the unimaginable to become real. Audaciously believing that the unimaginable can become real is a daily ritual for all who walk the road of cancer. With each devastating diagnosis that knocks us down and sends our minds spinning and our hearts sinking, we are lifted back up with unbelievable news that the tumors are gone. Time and time again we are lifted back to our feet because doctors have no scientific explanation as to why she responds so well to treatments.

We stopped asking “why me” a long time ago. Because the answer from the best minds in cancer research remains the same, “ we don’t know.” When we ask, “why does she get great results that other women do not get?” The answer is the same, “we don’t know, at least not yet”.

Laura’s recent scan before Thanksgiving revealed that in just 8 weeks her disease has “almost completely gone away”. As the woman who heads UCSF’s clinical trials said, “ I’ve never seen this kind of response in any of my patients.” It makes her cry, us too. The unimaginable has become our reality.
So I know a little about what it is like to receive some unimaginable news, news that doesn’t make sense, news that defies explanation from modern science.

Our life is spent living on the edge of medical mystery in the 21st century. I have no problem reading scripture that turns human understanding upside down. In fact, I am restored by it. God can bring new life in ways that takes all that we know to be true and turns it topsy-turvy. This isn’t just Good News! It is Great News! Christmas is the audacious belief in a God that creates a path, when all logic and evidence indicates there is no path.

Rev. Dan