What and who are we, and whither would we go, and why, really?
 
I start to answer these questions, not by copying what others say, or by mouthing what others expect me to say as a minister, but by honestly saying what I think I know.
 
As you know, I entered ministry via a route through embalming.  At 18 I looked closely into death.  It awakened a wonder at the structure of our bodies and an appreciation …

What ever became of vision?  Our current political and religious leadership have visions so dark and backward we forsake ever hoping for better.  Can we look past these dreary scenarios?  Dare we?
 
The visionaries of the past left failed results, leading us to cynicism.  Skinner’s meager Walden II was at least a fair attempt at being fair.  The Farm in Tennessee and the Oneida Community in upper New York were limited to limited communes.  The great …

Bucky Fuller, one of the more innovative and colorful engineers of our 20th Century, saw early boats as the strong shape of a dome upside down.  Typical of his far-reaching sort of thinking, he once speculated that early boats either went with the wind or against it.  In the west, we admire the daring-do of earliest ship captains fighting the wind by using it, angling sail and rudder just so to travel zig-zag out of …

Humanists tend not to believe in prayer.  Humanists believe in human ability and choice in a natural universe.  Miracles are either impossible or explainable.  Working material and social reality by merely thinking something fervently just doesn’t happen.  Scientific evidence for the effect of prayer is scant.  But personal experience of many is profound.
 
Prayer may not be humanistic, but is human.  Many humans in all sorts of cultures pray.  They talk as with ancestors, saints, gods, …

I once got to meet The Blind Saint of Vrindivan, India.  He was the guru of my guru, Dr. Vasavada.  Dr. Vasavada, of Bombay, India, was fresh in Chicago from having been trained with Carl Jung as an analyst.  I was at the University of Chicago in seminary and took to helping Dr. Vasavada get around town while learning about Jungian psychology and eastern religion from him.  When the chance to meet his guru in …

The eastern version of our western divine right of kings was the Chinese Mandate of Heaven.  Let us consider its framework and apply it to our current king of sorts, King George.  I do this, not in a partisan way, but towards loving our country, all humanity, and earth.
The Chou, a somewhat crude but ambitious crew, defeated the Shang in 1115 B.C., beginning one of the longest dynasties in Chinese history (1115-221 B.C.)   In order …

What is the worth of matter and these bodies made from it?  Some religionists say matter provides a mere stage on which we act the drama of our lives, creating the conditions of our afterlives.  Some scientists say it and our world are just insignificant specks in the enormity of the universe.  Are we lost in a false dilemma?  Must we choose between irrelevant matter and senseless matter?
 
We should reject both irrelevancy and senselessness.   As …

“The secret of fortune is joy in our hands.”  Emerson
They’re out to get you.  Who or what?  Circumstances.  Whether they are malevolent or benevolent depends on what you look for.  Just as a paranoid person sees and hears mean forces conspiring to trip him or her up by saying cruel things, so does a pronoic person tend to see friendly, celebratory forces out to make life a bounteous pleasure.  Go through life with cracked eyeglass …

One of the good things about growing older is that you have ample time to adjust to growing older.  When I look in the mirror, I see a face I’ve grown accustomed to.  Unlike friends who haven’t seen me for three or four decades, I don’t have to have to suddenly see the older me.
 
I’ve grown accustomed to my face
My breathing out and breathing in
I’ve grown accustomed to the way my hair won’t rightly lay
It …

At memorial services I sometimes refer to Psalm 90:
 
For all our days pass away, our years come to an end, like a sigh.  The years of our life are threescore and ten, or even by reason of strength fourscore; yet they are soon gone and we fly away… So teach us to number our days that we might get a heart of wisdom.
 
Long though our lives might be, they will end.  We will die, but …