On May 5, I preached a message about consumerism.  For many of us, if not most of us, consumerism is a religion and an addiction.  See the message here: Awakening from the American Nightmare: Consumerism and Hungry Ghosts.mp3. I invited members of the congregation to share their success stories about resisting the consumerist ethic to define life as getting things and then throwing them away. Read more.

Meditation Resources Here are some meditation resources that I promised in my Hillcrest message on January 27.  This message will be repeated at our South Bay campus on February 10. There are several opportunities to learn and practice meditation on our two campuses. Read more.

For well over 20 years now, my main spiritual practice has been attending silent meditation retreats of 7-10 days.  These retreats are led by teachers of the Mindfulness Buddhist tradition.  I just returned Sunday, May 27, from a retreat with Shinzen Young, whom I have studied with for many years; www.shinzen.org.  Read more.

Some Lessons LearnedI have been amazed at how travel can warp one’s sense of time. Because this is the first time I have ever been away from home or church for longer than a month, the last two months have both crawled and flown by. I say “crawled” because it seems like San Diego and September 4th feel so much longer ago than 8 weeks and yet I say “flown” because the time also feels like it has flown by and already, two out of three months (the first part of my five month sabbatical) are over.

Crowds, Museums and Ruins, Oh My!On October 1st, we left the relatively peaceful and relaxing Greek islands and spent a week in Athens…and then moved on to Rome…hence the title of this blog, Crowds, Museums and Ruins. And we often said to one another, “Oh my!” to the crowds, to the largess of these two incredible cities (Athens and Rome), to the crowds, to the rush and crush, to the museums, the crowds, the ruins, the crowds and, yes, all the people. In these cities we sometimes felt over-run, i...

Ferrying through the AegeanIn the sermon before I left on sabbatical I quoted from Phil Cousineau’s book The Art of Pilgrimage regarding “5 Excellent Practices of Pilgrimages”. Given that Jan and I have just spent time on five Greek Islands, I thought it would be good to review the five practices against the five islands including Rhodes, Kos, Santorini, Mykonos and Delos.Practice one: Practice the arts of attention and listening – while I hope to practice these everywhere, the islands of Rhodes...