Enjoy mystery and speculation, but don't drift into dogma.

When Isaiah predicted that spears would become pruning hooks, that's a reference to cultivating. Pruning and trimming and growing and paying close attention to the plants and whether they're getting enough water and if their roots are deep enough. Soil under the fingernails, grapes being trampled under bare feet, fingers sticky from handling fresh fruit. It's that green stripe you get around the sole of your shoes when you mow the lawn. Life in the age to come. Earthy.

Being a pastor for 20 years I realized that the labels, agnostic, atheist, believer, everybody's human and everybody wants to know what kind of universe we're living in, and everybody's living according to a story.

Often the people most concerned about others going to hell when they die seem less concerned with the hells on earth right now, while the people most concerned with the hells on earth right now seem the least concerned about hell after death.

The first word about you is that you received this life.

I embrace the term 'evangelical,' if by that we mean a belief that we together can actually work for change in the world, caring for the environment, extending to the poor generosity and kindness, a hopeful outlook. That's a beautiful sort of thing.

Any time someone makes you feel guilty about how you are living, that is part of the old system (pre-Christ).