The Pulpiteer

If you had asked me when I was going to preach a sermon on sin, I would have guessed never. This is the first of what I expect to become a series: taking a word we've developed an allergy to and asking whether there's something honorable and recoverable in it.

I start with a parable about two Habitat for Humanity volunteers and a screwdriver, and why one of them won't touch one. The injury is real. The workaround is understandable. ...

"You have access to the deepest wisdom you need within you."

This episode explores the life journey through the metaphor of origami. An artist starts with a single square. They fold and fold — never cutting, never tearing — until a flat sheet becomes something complex and organic. And then, if they wish, they can unfold it all the way back to a square. The shape is gone, but its story is still in the paper: an origami ma...

"Your contribution to the work does not define your worth."

A shorter episode than usual — homily length. Before the service we held a teams fair, where congregants could visit every team that makes this church function internally and do justice work in the wider community. This is the message that followed.

"Take your place" is not the theatre's places, everyone. It is not a performance, and it is not a way to earn prestige or...

"When you shed a tear, it is likely that some of the water in your tears has been cried before. Maybe many times. Maybe countless times."

This is a recording of our Water Communion service. I've left the voices of congregants sharing their blessings in the episode, so that those blessings might be passed on to you as well — sixty-odd voices, one to three words each, spoken into the water before it was poured into the bowl. Som...

"We are not free from triggers, but we can develop the skills to recognize those triggers when they happen."

In this episode I work line by line through a dense passage from Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed — the one about the oppressed having internalized the image of the oppressor and become fearful of freedom — and ask what it has to do with an ordinary Sunday morning.

I start on a running trail, with two dogs ...

"Your body is neither an inconvenience nor tertiary to your existence." This episode is an invitation into embodied practice — and a correction to something the summer sermon series may have implied.

Over July, the four-part Social Change series read Deepa Iyer's ecosystem through gut, heart, head, and spirit. That sequence could sound like a ladder. This message says otherwise: the mystery underneath our words is about the wh...

"It is possible to be free. Not free from anger, or shame, or fear — but free among them: transparent to the light, a window the light shines through." The final service in the four-part series reading Deepa Iyer's social change ecosystem through a developmental lens arrives at spirit — not a fourth faculty, but the awareness that has been practicing all along.

The sermon slows down on purpose: three mindful breaths, and...

The third sermon in The Pulpiteer's four-part series reading Deepa Iyer's social change ecosystem — from her book Social Change Now, the 2025–26 Unitarian Universalist Association common read — through a developmental lens drawn from the Enneagram's centers: gut, heart, head, and spirit.

This week: the thinking triad, whose underlying feeling is fear, and the three ecosystem roles where head energy finds its work &...

The season two finale of The Pulpiteer is a love letter — to a congregation, to podcast listeners, and to a word that has been weaponized for too many people: faith.

Preached on Flag Day, the service begins with the Great World House reframing the flag not as a banner of war but as a covenant — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as promises that carry duties, renewed by ordinary people in small rooms who deliber...

The second sermon in The Pulpiteer's four-part series reading Deepa Iyer's social change ecosystem — from her book Social Change Now, the 2025–26 Unitarian Universalist Association common read — through a developmental lens drawn from the Enneagram's centers: gut, heart, and head; plus spirit.

This episode turns from gut to heart: the feeling triad, whose underlying struggle is shame, and the two ecosystem roles wh...

There is a wall, a veil, between our world and the spirit world... the sages and prophets found ways through the wall, they brought back teachings from the spirit world. They left behind signs so that we could find our way through. Some folks who came after, got really into sign making. Some thought that the tunnels through the wall should be enlarged, decorated, celebrated... Some spent their lives making their religion's entrance...