“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.
It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it?”
~ From “Anne of Green Gables” by L.M. Montgomery

Dear friends,

I was moved to tears reading this article this week. It touched my heart. I want to share it with you.

When a Stranger Tucked in Her Son
Anonymous, as told to Katie Cunningham, The Guardian reporter, Sep. 20, 2026

“The simple act of caring is heroic.”
~ Edward Albert

I won’t lie – I was having nightmares before the trip. When my family immigrated to Australia from Europe, my husband travelled ahead to organize a place for us to live. I followed him seven weeks later with our four children, all aged under seven. I was a ball of stress for weeks in the lead-up.

Walking on to the plane with four kids in tow, I could almost hear people think, “Oh my God, I don’t want to be seated next to them!” And I completely understand. I had booked a window row and a seat in the middle row, thinking that I could put all the kids in the window row and then myself in the middle, where I could keep an eye on them. But when we got into the plane, the flight attendant told me that for security reasons we couldn’t do it that way. We had to rejig, my five-year-old son taking the middle-row seat alone, for what was to be a nearly 24-hour flight broken up into two legs.

There was a man seated next to my son. He didn’t display any of the annoyance he must be feeling about being seated next to a small child – a very kind act in itself, and one that brought me great relief. But his kindness didn’t end there.

At some point during the flight, after the cabin lights dimmed, the other three kids and I dozed off. When I woke up, I looked over to see my five-year-old had fallen asleep as well. The man next to him was pulling his blanket up and gently tucking him in. It was an unguarded moment of care and compassion.

I don’t think the man had any idea I saw him do that. We arrived safely and I never saw him again. But it was such a generous thing to do that, 20 years later, the memory remains magical.

She was alone with four children under seven, mid-immigration, mid-flight, mid-panic – the kind of exhaustion that sits in your chest like stone. When the cabin lights dimmed somewhere over the dark hours of a 24-hour journey, she finally dozed off. When she woke, she looked across the aisle to find a stranger quietly pulling a blanket over her sleeping five-year-old and tucking him in – gently, without fuss, with no audience he knew of. “It was an unguarded moment of care and compassion,” she writes, and that word – unguarded – is the one that stays. The man never knew she saw him. They never spoke of it. They arrived, and he disappeared into the crowd as strangers do. Twenty years have passed, and she still carries the image like something small and luminous in her pocket. There is a particular grace in kindness that asks nothing back, not even acknowledgment – the kind that happens when no one is watching, because it simply couldn’t not happen.

What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you? The next time you notice someone struggling quietly – on a plane, in a waiting room, on the street – do the small thing you almost talked yourself out of. Don’t announce it. Just do it and let it be enough.

Breathing love and life with you and all in Christ,

John

Dear friends,

I write this column not particularly spiritually centered but deeply troubled. We are less than 70 days away from the most important midterm election in our lifetime, possibly as significant as elections in the time of Abraham Lincoln or Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I am deeply troubled and angered by policies that dismantle clean-energy initiatives, open pristine lands to further drilling and fracking, pursue seabed mining, weaken voting rights, and seek to erase or distort American history in our parks, museums, and public institutions. I am troubled by the turning away from longtime allies and by the imposition of 50% tariffs on our Canadian neighbors. I am angered by what I see as a “war of choice” driven by the pursuit of power and wealth. Meanwhile, we are faced with $40 trillion national debt and growing. At $40 trillion, the debt would be roughly $117,000 per U.S. resident, using a population of about 342 million.

The acts of violence and cruelty carried out on our streets from this administration without accountability. Earlier in the year we saw in the streets of Minneapolis where a woman and a man, both U.S citizens, murdered by ICE agents. Recently, we saw on TV the street corner of Main where a young man, a husband and father working two jobs to support his family—killed while on his way to work, shot in the face in his car, dragged out dead and handcuffed on the street. The effect of indiscriminate arrests, most of whom are not criminals but people legally working to become citizens, is to numb us by normalizing once unthinkable actions. And this is happening in our community.

We are at a critical juncture where the far right has been emboldened to use government to destroy government while building a grand ARCH to celebrate the takeover. Each year is more brutal and the silence permits the oppression to widen and deepen. Everyday. the truth is violated more profoundly from this administration.

Today, the poor are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer in wealth and political power. The World Inequality Report came out with the finding that 0.001% of the world’s population holds 3X the wealth of poorest half of humanity. That number is staggering and obscene. Such inequality should trouble the conscience of anyone who believes that every human being bears the image of God. Ordinary and lower middle-class citizens are deprived of health care, childcare, assistance with food and decent housing. Our church served as a distribution site for Second Harvest, providing food to families with children. That program ended following cuts in government funding.

Meanwhile, the President and his family members make billions through insider information, graft and corruption in a scale we have not seen before. The very heavens must cry out in the name of the poor and powerless.

The prayer of the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, is being silenced. Mary proclaimed a God who hears the cries of the lowly, brings down the mighty from their thrones, and lifts up those who have been cast down. Her song is a prophetic declaration that God stands with the poor, the vulnerable, and the powerless.

Where is the Living Christ in us emerging as prophecy? Where is the voice of John the Baptist exposing the evil and wicked deeds of the king and pointing to the light in the darkness? Where is the turning over of tables in the temple by the scandal that we have no money for childcare and yet we support a form of capitalism that give more tax cuts for billionaires at the expense of cutting aids and programs for the poorest on the planet.

The biblical story of Exodus reminds us that God does not remain indifferent to human suffering. The enslaved Israelites groaned under the weight of oppression and cried out for help. Their cry rose to God, and God heard their groaning and took notice of their suffering.

“The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out.
Their cry for help rose up to God from their slavery. 
God heard their groaning… and God took notice of them.” (Exodus 2:23–25)

It is time for us to practice “Holy Impatience.” Patience is indeed a virtue. But there are moments when patience in the face of injustice becomes complicity. There are times when impatience at injustice, corruption, and cruelty to the oppressed must be called out and pushed back. This is that time.

As we approach this consequential election, I encourage you to ground yourselves in the work of prophetic witness. Whatever our political affiliations, we have a moral responsibility to be informed, engaged, and attentive to the choices before us.

Talk with one another. Listen to one another. Share your growing understanding and concerns. Encourage family members, friends, and neighbors to register and participate in the election. Bring people together for honest conversation—not simply to persuade one another, but to illuminate the moral and civic choices before us. Most importantly, resist the temptation to believe that your vote does not matter.

This is a time for courage.
This is a time for conscience.
This is a time for Holy Impatience.

May we refuse indifference and passivity. May we listen for the cries of those who suffer. And may the Living Christ within us give us the courage to speak truth to power, seek justice, and become a light in the darkness.

In Christ,
John

Dear Friends,

I have three things to share with you.

First, I have recently moved into a new residence after living in the same house for five years. My landlord gave me notice to vacate because he decided to put the property up for sale. It’s been disruptive and stressful, to say the least. Even though I had a lot of experience moving as an itinerant preacher, I find that it is never easy, and you never really get used to it.

On the positive side, this move has reminded me again that I still have lots of stuff to shed and let go of as I prepare for eventual retirement. Each time I had to move, I have been forced to sort through my belongings and part with things I no longer need. I ask myself “Why do you have so much stuff when you can’t take it with you?” Travel light, I say.

Secondly, we have just completed another successful three weeks of summer programs for children. It truly took a village to make it happen. We began with Vacation Bible School, followed by Summer Children’s Music led by Lara Willingham and Basillio Diego under the direction of Mike Locke-Paddon. We concluded with a week of Children’s Swim Lessons.

When I recently read about the tragic drowning deaths of 40 people, mostly young, during a heatwave in France, it underscored the importance of teaching children how to swim. It is reassuring to know that through our swim lessons we are equipping children with a life-saving skill that can serve them for years to come. In a small but meaningful way, we are helping them gain confidence in the water and learn a skill that truly lasts a lifetime.

I am deeply grateful to all the volunteers, teachers, musicians, and parents who helped make these programs possible. Together, they provided opportunities for children to learn, grow, create, play, and build friendships in a safe and nurturing environment.

Finally, I’m planning to do a 3 Part Sermon Series on “Living a Conscious & Ethical Life.”

June 28:  Part 1) “How Good People Participate in Collective Evil”
July   5:   Part 2) “Celebrating 250th as a Conscious & Ethical Nation”
July 12:   Part 3) “How Do We Become Conscious & Ethical People”

As our nation prepares to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the founding of the American Republic, it is an appropriate time not only to celebrate our achievements but also to examine our national soul. Anniversaries are invitations to remember, to give thanks, and to ask difficult but necessary questions.

The spirit of the 250th celebration should be about “We the People”—the ongoing work of building a more just, compassionate, and democratic society. It should not become an occasion for the self-promotion of any one individual or the glorification of political power. The strength of our republic has always rested not in a single leader but in the shared responsibility of its citizens.

This sermon series is not about endorsing or condemning political parties. It is about asking a more enduring question: What does it mean to live consciously and ethically as disciples of Jesus in this moment of our nation’s history?

I believe America has yet to honestly look at its own shadows. In my view, efforts by President Trump and others to whitewash or reinterpret difficult chapters of our history risk preventing us from taking an honest account of who we have been and who we are today. As Jason Stanley writes in Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, “A country that cannot acknowledge its history—the good, the bad, and the ugly—is by definition not great.”

A healthy society has the courage and the moral principle to face both its history and its present reality in their fullness. It neither runs away in denial nor remains trapped in shame. Instead, it says “yes” to what has been—not to make excuse for it, but to learn from our past mistakes to create a better society in the present and creating a better future for generations to come.

“Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.”
~ George Santayana, a Spanish-American philosopher, from The Life of Reason (1905)

Today, as our nation approaches its 250th anniversary, many of us carry both gratitude and grief. It is heartbreaking to witness the treatment of immigrants, the separation of families, and the fear experienced by many of our neighbors. It is also deeply troubling when governmental power appears to be used to target perceived political opponents or when the institutions entrusted with equal justice are seen as serving partisan ends. These are only some of the signs of a deeper moral and spiritual crisis. And I was reminded once again of one of George Washington’s favorite Bible verses, Micah 4:4 — “Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid.”

As followers of Christ, our first allegiance is not to a political party or ideology but to the Kingdom of God. The prophets consistently reminded God’s people that a nation’s greatness is measured not by its wealth, military strength, or political victories, but by how it treats the stranger, the vulnerable, and those without power.

As followers of Christ, we are called to be conscious and ethical people—people who love truth, practice justice, show mercy, and seek the common good. In this three-part series, we will explore how we can unconsciously participate in collective evil, and what it means to become conscious people, lead with compassionate hearts, and practice moral courage in a time when our nation needs these virtues more than ever.

Grace and Peace,

John

I Would Like …

On the last Sunday of Eastertide, I shared with you my dream that has been a catalyst for my own resurrection of sort. Since then, there has been a noticeable and undeniable shift within me. It feels as though something I have been waiting for all my life is finally beginning to happen. So I wrote this “I Would Like…”

What would I like?

I would like to live a life of freedom and love, wisdom and aliveness,
like the sunflower, turning toward God who deeply nourishes my becoming.

I would like to be at the edge of my knowing and becoming,
present with joy and wonder, to the beauty of life’s emergence.

I would like to live without fear for myself or my loved ones,
extending to all beings, and without causing fear to any living being.

I would like to be very, very tender, and when it’s called for,
I would like to be fiercely powerful in the service of love, life, and the good.

I would like to engage with others with compassion
and with permission to allow what wants to emerge in me and in them.

I would like to engage in my work with a sense of purpose, gratitude, and possibility.

I would like to be a hub for love and life,
letting flows flow through, without needing to hold or grasp on to anything.

I would like to welcome and play with what arises in the moment,
in any situation.

I would like to live free as birds, to love, to be,
as an invitation to infinite things and possibilities.

What would you like? 

John

Easter Hope

I often wonder why so much of human life seems so futile, so tragic, so short, and so sad. If Christ is risen, why do people die before they begin to truly live? Why has there been nonstop war? Why are so many people imprisoned unjustly? Why are the poor oppressed? Why do we destroy so many of our relationships? If Christ is risen, why is there so much suffering? What is God up to? It really doesn’t make any logical sense. Is the resurrection something that just happened once, in his body, but not in ours? 

I believe the resurrection of Christ is saying that the final judgment has already happened. It’s nothing we need to fear. It’s nothing we need to avoid or deny. God’s final judgment is that God will have the last word! Easter reveals that there are no dead ends; ultimately, nothing is going to end in tragedy and crucifixion. 

Of course we look around us, at history and at life in its daily moments and it seems, “No, that isn’t true.” And yet, ever and again, here and there, more than we suspect, new life breaks through for those who are willing to see and to cooperate with this universal mystery of resurrection.

In our part of the world, Easter coincides with springtime. I hope you’re going out and seeing the leaves and the flowers being reborn after months of winter. When I go for a walk in early mornings, sure enough, the sun rises over the hills as it always does. One early  morning, the sun appeared not so much like a sunrise but as a groundswell. The light was coming from the earth. It was coming from the world we live in. It was coming not from the top, but from the bottom. It seemed to say that even all of this, which looks muddy and material, even all of this, which looks so ordinary and dying, will be reborn. 

Easter is the feast of hope. This is the Easter hope that says God will have the last word and that God’s final judgment is resurrection. God will turn all that we maim and destroy and hurt and punish into life and beauty. 

What the resurrection reveals more than anything else is that love is stronger than hate, peace is greater than war, life is stronger than death. Jesus walks the way of death with love, and what it becomes is not death but life. Surprise of surprises! It doesn’t fit any logical explanation. Yet this is the mystery: that nothing dies forever, and that all that has died will be reborn in love.  

So, to be a Christian is to be inevitably and forever a person of hope. God in Christ is saying this is what will last: My life and my love will always and forever have the final word.  

“Everything will be all right in the end.

If it’s not all right, it is not yet the end.”
~ Richard Rohr from The Universal Christ

John