Fiction author, Kurt Voneggut, once pointed out the hypocrisy of many loud conservative Christians who demanded that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public buildings and court house lawns without ever asking to have the Beatitudes publicly posted. He was certainly no theologian but he hit on a very good point. Religion that is "useful" in controlling the conduct of civil society is always going to be popular with the "law and order" crowd but the moral teachings of Jesus about love, hope, forgiveness, generosity, and compassion, those tend to make the self-righteous pretty uncomfortable and therefore are largely ignored.

Jesus Seminar founding member, Marcus Borg, first described the message of Jesus as being "radical compassion." Peer and fellow seminar member, Karen Armstrong, took that concept to an interfaith (or no faith) form of spirituality, saying, The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

The opposite of spirituality is not atheism. It is, in our partisan, narcissistic, and cannibalistic capitalist society, more akin to sociopathy. The good news is that we get to choose which path we want to follow.

Ten years ago, when I was still blond and clean shaven, I delivered this sermon in our former church building to try to give an honest and academic explanation of the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke. This year I am speaking out of state so we will re-run this video and I will be back next week to share with you the message I am delivering in South Carolina this weekend. Merry Christmas!

In 1971, in the early days of the "War on Drugs," then President Nixon appointed a commission to study marijuana and to release their results and policy suggestions. More than 80 people worked for most of a year to produce a nearly 4000 page long report and even though Nixon commissioned the study, the results were that pot was no more dangerous than alcohol and they recommended that it be decriminalized and managed in the same way as alcohol in the interests of public health. The report even named the danger of the growing trend of incarceration on marijuana charges which was likely to make keeping people in jail an income stream within the prison industrial system. Obviously, Nixon ignored both the facts and the recommendations of his own commission but, even worse, every president for the past 50 years has done the same while deaths from lethal drugs have increased by more than 500% since the failed "War on Drugs" began, we still waste billions of dollars in police and prison resources devoted to marijuana "crimes."

A familiar image from the Advent season is leveling the mountains so that all "may walk safely." One example of this process in our own times has been the increasing emphasis on healing trauma, especially since marginalized people disproportionately experience trauma. From ACEs to trauma-informed care, to emerging approaches that are healing-centered and asset-informed, we wholeheartedly welcome resources to prevent, heal, and transform trauma. At the same time, we recognize and celebrate that we are more than our trauma. Together, we are leveling mountains and creating communities where thriving can be the norm, rather than the exception.

Stephen Colbert observed that, like most of us, not being a lawyer, it is hard to judge whether 17-year-old, Kyle Rittenhouse, broke any laws when he took a semi-automatic rifle to the demonstration in Kenosha and ended up killing two demonstrators. But, if he didn't, then the laws need to be changed. Years of progressively liberalized laws regarding open-carry and the availability of military styled weapons is a part of the fabric of a society in which a teenager, imagining himself to be a conservative superhero, ends up killing liberal demonstrators and then being found "not guilty" in the justice system. Clearly, he is guilty of a monstrous crime . . . it just wasn't "illegal," which means that state legislatures and maybe even all of us, are guilty of these murders. America must come back from the brink of gun insanity.

Emiliana Simon-Thomas and Jeremy Adam Smith observed that, "Americans are very grateful and they think gratitude is important—they're just not very good at expressing it." In our world of constant and chronic stressors, it takes intentional effort to recognize, appreciate, and savor the good things in our lives. But when we do, we create conditions for our relationships to thrive: savoring positive experiences, expressing thanks, and receiving gratitude from others.

As we approach our national observance of Thanksgiving, we are being asked to also give respectful reflection to the Indigenous Nations who were here thousands of years before Europeans sailed across the Atlantic in little wooden ships. Guilt for the centuries of genocide, enslavement, and pathological land theft hardly makes sense in the 21st century. What we need now is understand about how we got here and not some exercise in self-flagellation for the sins of our ancestors (though reparations might make for a good conversation!).

US borders are almost always in the news, ubiquitous even to the point of invisibility. But the abusive treatment of Haitian refugees last September, from administrative policies to violent border patrolmen on horseback, was a stark reminder of their cruelty. Political borders are real and have real impacts, but they are not objective or neutral. Their history, along with their psychosocial meanings, reflect the inequalities of colonial violence. We need to think deeply about, and act courageously, in favor of honoring our shared humanity and our relationship to the earth.

While the disappearance of anyone is tragic, the way the media exhaustively covers the disappearance of beautiful, young, white women compared with the silence around the disappearance of tens of thousands of women of color shows more than a media bias, it reveals a self perpetuating racism in the way the public shows more concern about white victims than we do about non-white victims. The real roots of racism hide, not only in our institutions but inside our own brains and that is where we have to go to end the generation after generation education in racism.