Most of us have a loved one who has wrestled with addiction, or we have wrestled ourselves. And yet we continue to hide where this medical condition shows up in our lives, letting the shame around addiction isolate us and cut us off from the tools that can bring healing. How can we move away from shame and deepen our capacity for transformative love?

As children, we explore the world with an inherent sense of curiosity and awe. Responsibilities descend onto our shoulders as we get older, however, and it can be hard to find time for anything other than keeping our heads down and getting through our duties of work and caregiving. How can we reclaim simple pleasures of joy and wonder?

Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh taught that the next Buddha may not take the form of an individual, but rather arise as a community. In a sea of flawed figureheads and imperfect communities, how do we build the soul-relationships that can lead to spiritual awakening and justice in our world?

This Sunday we explore what it means to awaken curiosity again — not as a pleasant spiritual quality, but as a practice with real consequences. What does it look like to meet the world with beginner’s mind? To shift from the clenched posture of anxiety into the open posture of wonder? To love the questions themselves, even when the answers aren’t coming?

There is a cognitive shift astronauts experience when viewing the earth from space, writes space philosopher Frank White, which results in a bone-deep awareness of the miracle and fragility of our planet and our connections to one another and all life. As we near Earth day, how do we cultivate this kind of spiritual experience from our place on this beautiful blue boat home?

All humankind is bound together in interdependence, and yet our system of crime and punishment in this country neither centers the healing and repair of victims nor the rehabilitation of perpetrators. What would a system of public safety look like if we truly valued everyone’s wholeness and all of our connections with one another?

This weekend we reflect on the ancient Christian Easter story of the rising again of life in the midst of hopelessness, grief, and oppression. When we so desperately need possibility to arise again in our lives and world, what meaning might we find in old stories?

Food means so much to us – it nourishes our bodies and brings us pleasure, we treasure the special recipes from our cultures and our families, we feed each other to show we care. Yet diet culture runs rampant in our society, and most of us are taught that something is wrong with how we look, and food is to blame. Join us this Sunday to reflect on how we can build a more joyful, more mindful, more loving relationship with our bodies and what we eat.

We celebrated our annual Intergenerational Flower Ceremony, reflecting on lessons from the garden about the thriving of life, as well as honoring Nowruz, the Iranian New Year’s Day. All are invited to bring a flower to participate in the in-person ceremony (we’ll have extras too), wear floral prints, or have flowers with you on your zoom screen at home.

Honoring Women’s History Month, I want to dig up something that has been long buried. I have been a history nerd my whole life. And the question that has haunted me longest is not what the story says — but what story is missing. Who got left out, sealed away, declared unworthy? This Sunday we’ll follow that question into scrolls left in the Egyptian desert and ask ourselves what it has to do with the truths we carry sealed inside ourselves — the voices we were told were too much, the stories we couldn’t speak aloud, the parts of us still waiting to be found. Come ready to dig. Come ready to be surprised by what was there all along.

Human cultures around the world and throughout time have sung and chanted together to make the work easier, teach the children, protest injustice, and connect with the holy. An old saying (attributed to many) is that “to sing is to pray twice.” How can we get in touch with the power of our own voices to connect to each other, to justice, and to greater meaning in our lives?

We don emotional chainmail to protect against heartbreak, present a shiny façade to hide the embarrassing parts of our lives, think we need a shield to be strong. Yet deeply meaningful connection only comes when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable with each other. How can we find the courage to take off our armor?