I was at a spiritual retreat last weekend when I realized that the medicine I had come for was not the medicine I was receiving. I had gone to this retreat for the medicine of a few particular spiritual practices based on prayer and song. I was defintely getting these but on the third day I realized there was something else going on…

Some disappointments are so crushing they feel like a soul betrayal. The best friend from childhood who ghosts you. The company who has security walk you out of the office when they fire you for asking about workplace safety (yes that really happened). The partner who said they’d love you forever and you later discover they had already moved on.

One of the requirements for becoming ordained was a psychiatric evaluation chock full of personality tests. The most intimidating was the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. This behemoth will be familiar to any mental health professional as it’s often used to identify psycopathy…

When I first started psychic work it seemed like magic. As I was building my psychic certainty I would see strange things in people’s energies and doubt myself. So for example, someone would ask me what their next steps should be with their job and I would see a yellow slug in their heart chakra...

I’ve seen teachers turn on their own students, cutting them down with gossip and fear disguised as self-righteousness. I’ve seen teachers exile former students who get too big. I’ve seen teachers dismiss the wisdom and even warnings their own students bring them, often at their peril…

As the shuttle succesfully moved higher and higher with cheering crowds on the ground and exhuberant TV hosts narrating the event, I heard one anchorman say something I’ll never forget. He said, “Well there she goes folks, and I think we all really needed a reason to look up.” I had to stop the treadmill and just stare.

Let’s start with this fact: in each and every one of the four gospels it’s women who first encounter Jesus. It’s women who go seeking him beyond the disaster of crucifixion. It’s women who recognize and believe it’s actually him. It’s women who tell the other male disciples to quit being sad sacks and come see the miracle Jesus was talking about the whole time.

Christians are kind of obsessed with the crucifixion, amirite? Most Catholic churches have a bloody, skeletal Jesus on the cross right up front. Monastics of all kinds wear a little crucified Jesus around their necks or on their prayer beads. You’ll usually find him strung up on a rosary…

I remember when I first heard of Rambo Jesus. I was in a seminary class called “Queering Christian Theology” which - as a queer woman and someone only just discovering the depth of Christianity - struck me as very weird. So of course I signed up.

There are as many ways to be a ‘guru’ as there are people. And, true to form, us Westerners have coopted the word guru to simply mean someone who is good at something. We’ve got tech gurus, food gurus, exercise gurus, and pedophile gurus (sorry, couldn’t help myself). These are just kind of a trendy way to refer to experts. Then there are the gurus who actually have some spiritual power, if not the spiritual maturity.

How can they call themselves Christians and yet act so very un-Christian? How can they insist that the Gospels are the literal word of God then celebrate when the foreigner is imprisoned instead of welcomed, when the children are sexually abused instead of treasured as our greatest teachers, when women are denied life-saving health care instead of healed of all that ails them?

John isn’t a story book telling us what happened. This Gospel is a map of our own spiritual awakening with one of the most sarcastic, anti-BS, powerful healers at the guiding helm. But in John, these healings aren’t called ‘miracles’. They’re called ‘signs’. Signs of what you ask? Signs of what each and every one of us is becoming.

The first thing I ever learned in my psychic training was to stay amused. This is exactly the opposite of how I usually like to approach the world. It’s very serious business to be a minister, after all. There’s so many people’s pain to be faced, so many cultural traumas to unwind, and so many prayers to say. No time for fun!

Where to even begin with this smorgasbord of joy? First, the non-stop political commentary highlighting resilience and the kind of justice people make for themselves when legal justice is denied. And then we have Ricky Martin with a skin care routine for the ages singing about what happened in Hawai'i, and to him.

A big part of my final semester at seminary was spent at Black Lives Matter protests, arm in arm with religious professionals trying to be a buffer between the police line and the student line. There were Franciscan and Dominican monks in brown robes, Jesuit sisters in crisp habits, Catholic priests and novitiates with black buttons neck to toe, and all of us Protestant folks in our clergy collars…

I had the rare pleasure of sitting up all night with a sacred fire this last weekend. Over the course of the night, the fire tender raked the coals into different shapes. The one shape I saw over and over was a flaming heart. It reminded me of the one I often see shining out from the center of Mary, Jesus, and many a saint.

As Minneapolis is being overrun by ICE (KKK Gestapo née Jim Crow), I keep thinking of this one man. He was a former Sheriff on our hospice service for 6 or 7 months. He had done everything by the book, obeyed his own law, raised a family as best as he was able, and was still terrified at the end…

There’s a section of my pantry full of good intentions. You know the one. It’s full of herbal teas meant to balance my various cycles and fluids that I’m definitely going to drink one day. There are those really fancy organic lentils I bought at the trendy farm store last fall that I’m going to cook for really special guests…

The Jesus liftetime was pretty much that soul’s final lifetime in a physical body. I say ‘pretty much’ because I have it on good authority that he came back one more time as a Greek sailor, just for a little vacay before jetting off to the fully realized messianic realm of consciouness….

I’ve realized over time that I’m usually the one who most needs to hear my sermons. The funny thing is, I don’t remember this until I’m literally in a pulpit halfway through the message I think you need to hear. If you watch carefully, you’ll always see a little moment when I realize mid-sentence that this one is for me…