About the Message: Rev. Phil Sweet — The Human Capacity for Self-Deception If you mapped out a time line of our planet’s history of a hundred yards, the length of a football field, humans arrived on the scene one-eighth of an inch from the end. It is easy to see how human beings could feel […]
Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in Western Civilization for more than 2000 years. It’s a fact we sometimes forget in our liberal religious tradition. Many of you do not consider yourselves Christian. It is not a term you would use to describe your personal religious view. Some of you grew up in […]
Perfection is the preoccupation of millions of Americans. The quest for perfection is a widespread and feverish affair in a consumer society. We are all flawed, designed with handicaps. Often it is our infirmities and imperfections that are our greatest gifts. If Jesus actually said: Be Ye perfect, he was having an off day. Phil […]
The subject comes from a book of the same title written by Ashley Montagu, a British American anthropologist. The qualities that may save us as a civilization I attribute to women: reverence, respect, gentleness, understanding, appreciation, willingness to submit without losing your integrity, capacity to serve without losing the spirit, concern for binding up wounds […]
The qualities of Advent are faith, hope, love and joy, the indispensable elements of a meaningful existence. Hope may be the least understood of the four. Hope rises and falls any number of times during the course of a single day. The Oxford English Dictionary has 60 different examples of hope, but all with a […]
Christianity is one of a group of mystery religions. Mystery diminishes the more you throw the light of understanding at it. Often, mystery led to manipulation, those in positions of power and authority, preyed on the fears and superstitions and ignorance of the common people. But there is no need to be ignorant to feel […]
He was a liar, a cheat, a con-man and a playboy. While baptized as a Christian, he never had the slightest interest or connection with institutional religion. Following the release of a film about his life, his widow issued a public statement. She had been abandoned in Brazil when he went back to Europe to […]
Loren Eisely, the distinguished anthropologist, wrote a book entitled “The Unexpected Universe” in which he says the universe, contrary to earlier scientists who had wrapped it up in a neat package of law and order, is full of surprises. Who would have thought that human beings would first appear when ice covered most of the […]
No one can be mature until they have arrived at the very high spiritual achievement of looking at death and accepting it, perhaps it is the last and highest of all achievements. It casts a mantle of significance over everything we do. Carlos Castenada says: Death is our eternal companion, always to our left, at […]
Here I am, a statistical improbability, conceived in a universe of infinite galaxies, in a Milky Way of 100 billion stars, in a solar system on the edge of nowhere, living on the third planet from a small sun, which is mostly covered by salt water, and encased in an envelope of mixed gases, dependent […]