While I was out of town last week, protesters showed up and disrupted worship at Calvary. They came to a Bible study and started yelling terrible things at participants. They yelled at people trying to enter the sanctuary for worship. We received good support from the SF Police Department, and positive media coverage, which led…
A week ago, the US Supreme Court handed down a tragic and disastrous ruling Dobbs V Jackson that overturns fifty years of precedent about abortion. I knew it was coming. The Republican Party has been very clear about what it was doing as it packed the court. I volunteer my time with Planned Parenthood’s Clergy…
If you followed my blog as I found my birth family, you might remember my half sister Carol. My birth mother didn’t want to meet me when I first contacted her, but she did give me the name of my birth father. He had died in 1996, but I tracked down his daughter Carol. I…
Here is the statement we shared in worship this morning at Calvary Presbyterian Church. Last week, we spoke these words together from the Confession of Belhar: —that the church must therefore stand by people in any form of suffering and need, which implies, among other things, that the church must witness against and strive against…
This is the statement I recorded to air at the beginning of Calvary’s worship service for Jan 10, 2021. I didn’t change the sermon I had already written and recorded. Maybe I should have. Who knows. But I know that I’ve preached about these things before, and will preach about them again. Here’s the statement:…
Today is Epiphany, the day the church marks the journey of the Magi to find Jesus. Every year in worship, we choose star words to follow, reflect on, ponder in the coming. year. January 2020 seems like another lifetime somehow, but the word I drew last year was “overflowing”. It’s not an unknown word to…
This is the letter I just emailed to the Southminster congregation today. To my Southminster family, It is with a full heart that I tell you I have just been called to be the pastor of Calvary Presbyterian Church in San Francisco today. I am both excited about this new call and heartbroken at the…
My birth mother died this morning. She had been in failing health for a while. I don’t know what I am feeling. I am sad. And I’m sure I will feel more sad at some point. I’m also grateful, not to replace or ignore the sadness, but as a companion to it. Before Washington State…
Here’s the prayer I offered in our modified, live streamed worship service tonight. (The words are mine. It was inspired from a prayer in the Reform Jewish Prayer book, Mishkan T’filah—A Reform Siddur.) Let us pray: O God, we are in uncertain times. And we are adapting our schedules, our practices, our sports, our meetings,…
With apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who wrote Love in the Time of Cholera, the world we’re in feels like it should be re-written by a magical realist. Because actual reality stinks. The World Health Organization has declared pandemic status for Covid-19, the coronavirus. The WHO Director General said, “WHO has been assessing this outbreak…
Glass Overflowing 