Why do we fall asleep when we hear these familiar teachings? What can prepare us to receive the divine affection? Are we ready to ask anew what does it mean to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength? And what difference does this make in loving others? The Mount Everest ideals are not what God helps us to attain now.

This first in a new sermon series draws on history, psychology, neuroscience, and truth. Revelation in Jesus in dialogue with evolution in the form of insincere critique.

If you believe that God loves you but are not able now to experience it, here is a simple  experiment that you may want to try. 

Beauty is a quality of divinity, experienced in the spirit that dwells within. Like a chauffeur who drives a dignitary around here and there, so that the dignitary may function and manifest, our first duty and privilege is to facilitate the entry of this spirit into action.

Looking for a safe space? Here's a dialogue about problems, satisfactions, and promises relevant to that quest. The dialogue is followed by a story of a soul-satisfying experience of the presence of divine love, which raises a question of how a person becomes aligned in such a way as to be ready to receive such a gift. Each person's journey is unique, thinking, feeling, and doing interweave, enabling one concept to ripen and then another, until the person is ready for a larger insight. The beauty of it all is that one person's path through the logic of interconnected spiritual concepts and their spiritual realization cannot serve as a pattern for someone else to imitate. 

Here are two stories of prayer. The first tells prayer rising spontaneously into worship as the mind-soul entertains high meanings and values. The second tells of praying for a list of individuals, with some of whom there had been some difficulties in relationship . . . and how in very short order that roughness was transformed. Closing: a Good Friday coda.

Scientific cosmology recognizes what is called the Great Attractor. It is near Saggitarius, and everything in the universe goes around it. If we take relativity physics as our total theory of space, the idea of a centered universe is meaningless. But cosmology might be able to develop a way to honor relativity physics without eclipsing the fact of the Great Attractor--which fits perfectly with the idea of a heavenly Paradise where the Creator has his residence. 

The present civilizational crisis can be understood as an imbalance between (1) material achievement and (2) wisdom and worship (and spiritual experience generally). Religion alone lacks the needed wisdom, and wisdom alone lacks the needed power; but in tandem they light a wonderfully bright torch.

A friend's story of spiritual transformation provides the metaphor. A passage from the Book of Job is reinterpreted. These components join together in an act that yields a new level of liberation.