Author: Higher Up IDEALS

  • Awakening From Death to Life

    Awakening From Death to Life

    Faith Though I’ve spoken at length I haven’t said a word And all this nothing that I’m saying Is nothing but absurd I speak with lies So that you might hear the truth I display for you illusion That you might have proof Do you know that this life, as most of us engage it,…

  • A Name and A Place for All

    A Name and A Place for All

    Recently, members of the Boulder County Together Colorado Lay and Faith Leader Caucuses came together with people all over the county came together to talk about housing justice–most particularly as it pertains to people living in mobile home communities. As a part of the program, my good friend, Rabbi Marc Soloway of Congregation Bonai Shalom…

  • The Story You Refuse to Hear May Be Your Own

    In a recent sermon called, The Search for the present Christ, I challenged my community to reflect on the image of Afro-Cuban artist, Harmonia Rosale’s work, I Exist, which features a black woman on the Cross. I asked them to do this not because I was trying to be provocative in the shock value sense,…

  • Narrative Insight: How the Stories We Tell Shape the World We Experience

    Narrative Insight: How the Stories We Tell Shape the World We Experience

    We are moving from the information age into the age of the narrative. Look around you and it is easy to see that how you tell your story matters. Whether it is your personal story or the story of your organizations, all of your relationships–and the depth of them–are determined by the stories you tell…

  • Christ Is of Faith

    Christ Is of Faith

    One of the tensions of the Christian tradition is the “already, but not yet” element of the Gospel. How I understand this is that people who are seeking to follow Christ, are living in the faith that the work that he set out to do among us is already accomplished. And yet, in our daily…

  • Waking Up To Love

    In the video that is below, I talk about how most mornings I am excited to wake up and spend some quality time with God. I don’t talk about what my day is like when I neglect to do that. Today, I missed that time due to some unforeseen circumstances. As a result, I was…

  • The Mystery of the Prosperity God-Spell

    Originally posted on The Roofless Church: If you look at the leaves on a tree or the grasses in the field, it is easy to see that abundance is an integral part of God’s reality.  That’s why in  Matthew 6:27-30 Jesus was quoted as saying, “Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to…

  • The Comfort Paradox

    The Comfort Paradox

    The first time I heard the saying, “Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted”, it was in seminary. I heard it from a cohort leader who said it in a way that led me to believe that she made it up. She never said she made it up. But, that was her response, when I…

  • Eye of the Be Holder

    Eye of the Be Holder

    Have you ever seen a cygnet? A cygnet is a baby swan. And they are super cute. And yet, when we talk of people who blossom into a more physically beautiful being than one may have imagined, we say that they were an “ugly duckling”, based on the tale by that name created by Hans…

  • To Governor Abbott of TX on Behalf of Rodney Reed on Death Row

    To Governor Abbott of TX on Behalf of Rodney Reed on Death Row

    When a parishioner from the church I serve emailed me this past Friday reminding me that the mother of Rodney Reed, the man on death row in TX whose case has grabbed the attention of millions, was the caregiver of her father before he passed it hit me hard. She had mentioned this to me…