Homework – Read the Preface and First Chapter (Vision) of our Congregational Read: What It Takes to Heal by Prentis Hemphill. Come prepared to share, so will I. We’ll see if we can’t do some healing and cast a vision, together.

I’ve given myself a few weeks to begin to digest my experiences at the Orphan Wisdom School in Ontario. So this is the first part of sharing what I learned there.

Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently, until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself … Continue reading An Invitation Into Love by Eric Hepburn (Soul Matters)

If we subscribe to this progressivist view of history, of evolution, of the unfolding of life in the universe – a view nominally supported by the hearts of the great wisdom traditions, by our own transient observations, and by the findings of science (at least in the human or Earthly near term – perhaps not … Continue reading New Blessings, Wiser Blessing by Eric Hepburn

We often think of justice work as ‘external’ – we focus our attention on the parts of cultures and systems and institutions that lie outside of us, outside of our control or influence. But this focus makes two mistakes – first, it presumes that we are not implicated in systems and cultures we choose not … Continue reading Healing Justice by Eric Hepburn

This is the third of a three part sermon series based on the benediction. May you find: Questions more Profound than Answers, Vulnerability more Powerful than Strength, and a Peace that Passeth All Understanding. Is it a peace that is available to us? Even in the midst of the suffering of others? Even in the … Continue reading A Peace that Passeth All Understanding by Eric Hepburn

This is the second of a three part sermon series based on the benediction. May you find: Questions more Profound than Answers, Vulnerability more Powerful than Strength, and a Peace that Passeth All Understanding. And here’s how we’re going to honor it: We tried it scripted, we tackled ‘questions more profound that answers’, now it’s … Continue reading Vulnerability More Powerful than Strength by Eric Hepburn

This is the first of a three part sermon series based on the benediction. May you find: Questions more Profound than Answers, Vulnerability more Powerful than Strength, and a Peace that Passeth All Understanding. And here’s how we’re going to honor it: You Ask, I answer… well, probably more like ponder, speculate, ruminate, you get … Continue reading Questions More Profound than Answers by Pulpiteer Eric Hepburn

A good covenant is easy to write and hard to practice. What can we do to better live the promises we’ve already made? How can we honor the spirit of a promise when its literal interpretation shifts from hard to impossible? If a promise can’t be kept literally, is it worthless? What do we really … Continue reading The Promises We Make by Eric Hepburn, Pulpiteer

We can’t interrupt the transmission of intergenerational trauma without asking deep questions. In the research on play, on imagination, on unconditional love – we begin to see the shape of some similarly deep answers. But can we do the work? Can we relinquish our expectations of conformity and compliance in favor of a world made … Continue reading Freedom to Imagine, Freedom to Play by Pulpiteer Eric Hepburn