Dear Mother in the Moon Dear Father in the Sun Dear Child in the Stars May you grant us this day The divine gift of surprise of seeing our world and our life in a new and powerful way. Open our eyes Open our minds Open our hearts Open our lives To the new that … Continue reading Divine Surprise
If you can’t find a community that feels like home, you have to build one. That’s what people have told me over the years, and my mother in the sky agrees. For me, that community, well, I think it should be a church. I impressed my minister in confirmation class when I was 9. I gave my … Continue reading Church Of. .
I was watching “The Blues Brothers” and a show on Westminster Abbey, where English royalty is crowned. The connection between the moment, hidden from viewers, where the incoming monarch is anointed with oil from the holy land, and the moment where Elwood is touched by a beam of light through a stained glass window, struck … Continue reading Callings
There was a time that social services came with a catch. To get what you needed, you had to show that you could be saved by whatever doctrine the organization which provided the services held as sacred and true. To get a bowl of soup and a mat for the night, the prayer service was … Continue reading Flock That
All I have to do is figure out where my interests overlap with other people and I can find a new group of potential acquaintances. That sounds so simple. After all, communities form around shared interests, shared concerns and shared values, so why not just find a community where I can share in the focus? … Continue reading Overlapping
Every human life is a dance with tragedy. Heartbreaking things happen all the time. The challenge each of us has is finding a way to heal, to learn, to move on from tragedy, making the most of what we do have rather than being sunk by our pain and our losses. “The Loneliness Of A … Continue reading Essential Tragedy
A friend of mine compared [transgender emergence] to jumping out of a plane without a parachute, only to discover that you have wings. Because, you really don’t know until you take that leap, and then, you know what? You’ve got to learn to fly. — Amanda Simpson, Refinery 29, March 2015 A bit of advice … Continue reading Self-Ordained
I’m good for the group when I’m in the front of the room. That’s not something I like to have to acknowledge. My inclination is to stay on the edge of the room, observing, understanding, seeing connections. I don’t speak unless I have something to say. I have never been a person who likes to … Continue reading Front Of The Room
Minds, it is said, are like parachutes. They only work when they are open. Learning to open your mind is a crucial part of seeking enlightenment. You need to move past the stuff that fills your mind, what you believe that you already know, in order to see things in a new way. The common … Continue reading Master Mind
In the church of the divine surprise, fascination is one of our key sacraments. Fascination is the key to deep learning, the impulse that opens us to move beyond our own assumptions and beliefs, leading us towards knowledge and healing. I am fascinated by stories, mostly the stories of growth and discovery, stories of people … Continue reading Fascinated
“Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel” by Kate Bowler stems from her Duke Divinity School thesis, which explains its extreme neutrality, even down to not pulling together threads that run through what have been the fastest growing churches in America since after WWII. The core belief has always been that God wants to … Continue reading Rules For Blessings
The most human thing we do may be the way in which we take stimuli, observations of the world around us, and apply meaning to them. Meanings make us human. They define our awareness and understanding of the world around us. They underlie all our choices. Freedom only exists in the moment between stimulus and … Continue reading Applying Meaning
“Congratulations!” I told the cashier in the dollar store. “Why are you congratulating me?” she asked. “You just told me that you were doing pretty well,” I said. “That’s a lot better than you could be doing! Congratulations!” “I’ve never had anyone congratulate me for doing pretty well before,” she replied, “but yes, it is … Continue reading Celebrant
Once you get good at no, it’s hard to change. I learned early that to survive and be even halfway comfortable in the world, I had to say no. No to my trans heart, no to expectations of safety, no to my body, no to indulgence, no to so many things. Once I got good … Continue reading No Habit
I give good meeting. My meetings are interactive, dynamic, energetic and fun. My goal is to stimulate thinking, creating shared goals and consensus through a good balance of work and play. To me, meetings are only useful if they are transformative. If you don’t feel stimulated to think in a new, creative and connected way, … Continue reading Meeting Moment
There is no ritual more gendered than a wedding. I remember vividly accompanying my partner to her sister’s wedding, a blue collar fete, and then jumping in the car and heading to Southern Comfort where I was going to do the keynote speech. The contrast between the traditional & binary gender separations of the wedding … Continue reading Revelation Ritual
Are You a Crucifixion Person or a Resurrection Person? by: Callan Williams To die and to be reborn. It’s a powerful notion, so powerful and pervasive in human societies that there is no surprise that Christianity puts death and rebirth at the core. And it provides an easy way to take a measure of someone’s … Continue reading Are You a Crucifixion Person or a Resurrection Person?
Callan 