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Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. – Hebrews 11:1 Our world is roiling with movements of people longing to be seen, heard, and treated with respect. Every one of us holds this as our deepest need after the need for food and shelter. Our desire to belong to one another in peaceful community is embedded deeply within the soul of each of us as a Sacred being. As scriptures teach us, we are each other’s keepers. The challenge is that in so… Read More

In general aviation, when a pilot is approaching an airport to land, we are required to listen to a field-specific frequency to get the weather report (ATIS). It will often sound something like this: Rockford Tower information X-Ray, 0754 zulu.Wind zero-eight-zero at eightVisibility one-zero, light rainCeiling 2500 broken, 4500 overcastTemperature four, dew point oneAltimeter three-zero-zero-threeILS runway one and ILS runway seven approaches are in useClearance Delivery is 119.25Ground control is combined with tower on 118.1Advise on initial contact you have information X-Ray All of the information in an ATIS report… Read More

Continuing on our theme of “dark night experiences,” I discovered a story called “The Old Woman in the Cave” told by mythic storyteller Michael Meade in his book Why The World Doesn’t End.   The old people of the tribes would tell of a special cave where knowledge of the wonders and workings of the world could be found. “Not too far to go,” they say, yet no one seems to find it anymore.  Inside the cave, there lives an old woman who remains unaffected by the rush of time and the… Read More

It seems like we’ve lived five years in the last seven days. Between the trauma and heartbreak we are witnessing in Afghanistan and the fear and foreboding we have lived through with hurricanes, droughts, fires, and floods, we are staring starkly into the face of the world from our nightmares. Lately, I’ve been reading and meditating on “dark night of the soul” experiences. Today, when most of us use that phrase, we casually refer to a challenging moment or a season of sadness. The term “dark night of the soul”… Read More

My apologies for the delay in writing to you this week. Like many of you, I watched in horror as images of Afghanistan flooded our television screens and social media feeds. I was heartbroken by so many stories that we heard and our collective complicity in creating this tragic moment. I decided to take a few days to think about what this means for us as a global community and where we might go from here. The tension this week for me, and perhaps you, is that I agree that… Read More

This weekend I will be hosting an online event with theologian Matthew Fox and Buddhist spiritual teacher Isa Gucciardi, author of Coming to Peace. Isa is a psychologist and creator of Depth Hypnosis, a groundbreaking therapeutic model that has won rave reviews from psychotherapeutic and spiritual counselors alike. In her book, Coming to Peace, she explores a process for moving through conflict in ourselves, our families and groups based on indigenous practices of honest dialogue and self-reflection. But for any process to work, she says these elements must be present… Read More

In a time long ago, a wise old Sufi was making his annual pilgrimage to Mecca. But it was a long walk for him, and the sun was high. Having averaged more than 20 miles a day, once Mecca was in sight, the old Sufi decided to lie down on the side of the road and rest up for his final leg of the journey. Minutes later, one of the other pilgrims violently kicked his feet. “Get up,” he commanded. “You blasphemer, you lie with your feet pointed toward God… Read More

Many years ago, a brave and prophetic colleague/friend named Jim Antal began sounding the alarm of climate change. Few other leaders in our circles were prioritizing climate change as the crisis of our time. We were locked in global wars, struggling with inequality, challenged by mass immigration, and fighting terrorism across the world. But Jim knew that all of those were irrelevant in the face of a larger brewing crisis. I remember him saying to me, “Cameron, if faith leaders don’t start speaking about the damage we are causing our… Read More

When I was a child going to school in Atlanta, Georgia, my teachers taught me that forming a “more perfect union” of freedom, equality and opportunity was the dream of democracy. “You are a citizen of this country,” they said, “and your responsibility is to hold that dream – even fight for it – not for your individual benefit but for all of us.” As I grew older, this duty of citizenship became complicated. I realized that my white skin color opened doors of opportunity closed to people with darker… Read More