This month we are taking on the gnarly topic of sacrifice. It is a concept that makes many of us uncomfortable, distrustful and a little bit surly, and rightly so.

Sacrifice is a powerful, ancient, evocative word that conjures images of animals slaughtered in rituals to bind a community together in a celebratory feast for a long-awaited harvest after a drought.

I have learned about faithfulness and sacrifice as a result of a very strange journey I have been on since I inadvertently found some of the men who were in Vietnam with my older brother, 2nd Lt. Robert M. Christian Jr., “Bobby” to me, who was killed on April 11, 1969.

The roots of violence: Wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character,  commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principles.

I confess I’ve never been a big fan of the concept of sacrifice. It’s always struck me as kind of punitive, like it’s morally superior to suffer than to enjoy life’s abundance.

For many of our CLF members, their support is truly a sacrifice—not only members on fixed incomes who give what they can, but also our incarcerated members, for whom even the price of a stamp to write to a pen pal is a significant sacrifice.

You can listen to audio recordings of Quest Monthly, read back issues or get electronic versions of the text to share with friends (and much more) at questformeaning.org

Give up pretending.

Everything, you know,

everything, sooner or later

gets eaten...

One fine day in San Francisco, nearly 35 years ago now, I found myself down on Mission Street, standing in line at the unemployment office.

Deep play is a form of tending to the spirit. We hope that through Quest, along with online worship, Facebook groups, questformeaning.org and our various other offerings, that the CLF provides a field where we can come together, play and explore.