Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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Every year in January, we celebrate one of history’s greatest leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his dream of racial and social justice. But he had to grow into his leadership. And his relationships were critical to this. Of course this is true. But in our American culture of radical individuality, we can fall…
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A sermon on Star Trek perhaps ought to begin with these fictional characters: But not this sermon. This sermon begins with this real life person: Thomas Wentworth Higginson: 19th century soldier, politician, abolitionist, author, mentor to poet Emily Dickinson, and Unitarian minister. Listen to something he once said about the human spirit: “Our true religious…
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“We shall overcome,” said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Consider with me a bit of human history. Archaeologists, looking back at the oldest humans, tell us that one in seven of those primal people died by violence. Later on, with the…
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Early one morning, goes the story, an old man went for a walk along a beach. Soon he spotted someone in the distance who seemed to be picking stuff up and throwing it into the sea. The person did it again and again. As the old man got close enough, he saw what was happening.…
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What it’s like to walk the labyrinth. What it was like when I walked it, as quite a few of you did with me this past January 1st here at West Shore. Let me describe it in present tense, to more vividly bring the past into the here-and-now moment. Easing into it, honestly–honestly–I find myself…
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To be a spiritual being having a human experience: of the many meanings this carries, the one we will explore together today is the having of difficult conversations. Just for strangers to meet and begin a conversation–for the timing to be just right–this is already so difficult! But there is even more difficulty—unique difficulty—when you…
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Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: The Prophets
This is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday. Tomorrow, the nation honors the life and legacy of that great prophet. I use that word, “prophet,” intentionally, designating anyone who speaks to the crucial issues of our time from the perspective of what is loving and just. Sometimes the prophet must trouble the waters when that’s…
Spiritflow 