“I have a dream for people, regardless of their race, color, creed, and gender, for the betterment of humanity and the planet, to promote life; and for all to have respect for all human life including mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual differences among all people of the world, who edify these same principles.” Linda Hourihan, HHCP
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
Following the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson to discuss civil rights legislation and posed for this picture. In the front row are Floyd McKissick (CORE), Whitney Young (National Urban League), Martin Luther King, Jr. (SCLC), Joachim Prinz (American Jewish Congress), A. Philip Randolph, President John F. Kennedy, Walter Reuther, and Roy Wilkins (NAACP). Other notable people in this photograph are John Lewis (Student Nonviolent Coordinating or “SNCC”), Mathew Ahmann (National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice), Reverend Eugene Carson Blake, W. Willard Wirtz (Secretary of Labor), and Vice President Lindon B. Johnson.
President John F. Kennedy addresses the nation on civil rights on June 11, 1963.
Taking a moment to appreciate courage, justice and nonviolence in the face of cruelty, injustice and violence.
The following is an important message on CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISM by James Talarico, seminary student:
Our pastor, Dr. Jim Rigby, is on his writing leave but I don’t know how much writing is getting done. I sent him a text asking for some inspiration for this sermon, and he gave me this. It’s “The Top Reasons Beer is Better than Religion.”
Number One: when you have beer, you don’t knock on people’s doors trying to give it away.
Number Two: there are laws against forcing beer on minors who can’t think for themselves.
Number Three: nobody’s ever been burned at the stake because of their favorite brand of beer.
Number Four: you don’t have to wait more than two thousand years for a second beer.
Number Five: and last, if you’ve devoted your life to beer, there are groups to help you.
My granddad was a Baptist preacher. I’ve been a member of this church since I was two years old. And now I’m in seminary studying to become a minister myself. My faith means more to me than anything. But if I’m being very honest, sometimes I hesitate for telling someone I’m Christian.
There is a cancer on our religion. Until we confess the sin that is Christian Nationalism and exorcize it from our churches, our religion can do a lot more damage than a six-pack of Lone Star.
There is nothing Christian about Christian Nationalism. It is the worship of power, social power, economic power, political power in the name of Christ. And it is a betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth.
He told us we would know them by their fruits. Jesus includes, Christian Nationalism excludes.
Jesus liberates, Christian Nationalism controls.
Jesus saves, Christian Nationalism kills.
Jesus started a universal movement, based on love. Christian Nationalism is a sectarian movement, based on mutual hate.
Jesus came to transform the world. Christian Nationalism is here to maintain the status quo.
They have co-opted the Son of God.
They’ve turned this humble rabbi into a gun-toting, gay-bashing, science-denying, money-loving, fear-mongering fascist.
And it is incumbent upon all Christians to confront it and denounce it.
Christian Nationalism is on the rise.
Two years ago, Christian Nationalists stormed the Capitol, killing police officers while carrying crosses, and signs reading “Jesus Saves.”
Last year, Christian Nationalists on the US Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade, allowing states like ours to outlaw abortion even in cases of rape and incest.
And as we speak, two Christian Nationalist billionaires are trying to replace public schools in Texas with private, Christian schooling.
We are closer than we think to a Christian Theocracy.
How did this happen?
The first followers of Jesus didn’t call themselves ‘Christians.’
They called themselves ‘The Way.’
Their crucified teacher taught them a different way of being human.
And they intended to follow it.
The early church was a revolutionary community built on radical love, a ‘peculiar people’ who shared all their possessions and refused to participate in the economy, the military, or the culture.
The Book of Acts tells us that the first Christians were persecuted for ‘turning the world upside down.’
But three hundred years after Jesus was executed by the Roman Empire, Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official state religion of that very same empire.
Constantine was the first Christian Nationalist.
And ever since, the powers that be have been taming Christianity, domesticating it, diluting it into something more palatable.
Pro-war, pro-wealth, pro-white supremacy.
That original counter-cultural movement became a tranquilized, privatized, weaponized religion the official sponsor of western civilization.
A religion of sharing became a religion of greed.
A religion of peace became a religion of violence.
A religion of forgiveness became a religion of judgment.
A religion of ego transformation became a religion of ego affirmation.
Today, Christian Nationalists obsess over people’s private parts while the planet burns.
Eight men own as much wealth as 3.6 billion people and Christian Nationalists are boycotting Barbie.
The Bible doesn’t mention abortion or gay marriage.
But it goes on and on about forgiving debt, liberating the poor and healing the sick.
Christian Nationalists like to say this is a Christian nation.
Not only is that historically inaccurate.
Not only is that theologically blasphemous, but it is just not true.
Look around us.
If this was truly a Christian nation, we would forgive student debt.
If this was truly a Christian nation, we would guarantee healthcare to every single person.
If this was truly a Christian nation, we would love all of our LGBTQ neighbors.
If this was truly a Christian nation, we would make sure every child in this state and in this country was housed, fed, clothed, educated, and insured.
If this was truly a Christian nation, we would never make it a Christian nation, because we know the table of fellowship is open to everybody, including our Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and atheist neighbors.
Jesus could have started a Christian theocracy. But love would never do that.
The closest thing we have to the kingdom of heaven is a multi-racial, multicultural democracy where power is truly shared among all people, something that’s yet to exist in human history.
Christan Nationalism is not only a threat to the American experiment in democracy. It’s also a threat to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
When someone asked Jesus to name his most important commandment, he cheats and gives two – two that he says are related. The first is to love God. The second, he said, is like it: “love thy neighbor as thyself.”
It’s like it because when I recognize the divine image in myself, I can’t help but recognize it in my neighbor; whether they’re Christian or not, whether they’re religious or not.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus specifically defines neighbor as someone different from us, racially, economically, politically, religiously.
God loves diversity.
God loves variety. Just look around this big, beautiful planet of ours.
Do we really think that God would make all these beautiful people with all their beautiful traditions for no reason at all?
There are so many pathways to the sacred.
The Islamic mystic Rumi said, “Every religion has love, but love has no religion.”
God is so much bigger than our human categories.
God is not a Presbyterian. God is not a Christian. God is not a noun at all. God is a verb.
God is not a being. God is being Itself.
God is love.
And that’s why Jesus is against anything that gets in the way of that love between neighbors, including religion.
That’s why he’s always breaking religious rules.
That’s why he’s always getting in trouble with the religious authorities.
That’s why he says sinners will see the kingdom of heaven before religious people do.
Sorry to everyone here. (parishioners laugh)
I knew you came all this way.
Religious supremacy is antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jesus didn’t come to establish a Christian nation.
He came to reveal ultimate reality, which he called the kingdom of God.
But it’s not like any kingdom we’ve ever known.
Instead of a throne, Jesus sits at a table.
Instead of a warhorse, Jesus rides a donkey.
Instead of a sword, Jesus picks up a cross.
The kingdom of God inverts the power dynamics of “all the kingdoms in the world.”
True strength is vulnerability.
True stature is equality.
True wealth is sharing.
And we as Christians are called to realize that kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven,” not by force, but by faith.
Jesus asked us to have the faith of a mustard seed, trusting that by living and dying for love we give birth to a better world.
That’s not easy to do.
In a world full of fear, Jesus knew we would put our trust in something other than God, something other than love.
As a Jewish rabbi, he called those things idols: money, status, and the most dangerous idol of all, power.
When Jesus was tempted by the devil, when he was in the wilderness, one of the things the devil offered was power, “all the kingdoms of the world,” and Jesus rejected it.
When his disciples ask who will be the most powerful in the kingdom of God, Jesus said, you know the lords of the earth push their people around, “but among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be a servant.
And when they still didn’t get it, and they ask who will be the greatest in the kingdom of God? Jesus said, “Little children,” the least powerful, but most trusting members of any human community.
That’s the kingdom of God.
I think Chance the Rapper said it best, “Don’t believe in kings. Believe in the kingdom.”
Jesus knew, in the words of Dorothy Soelle, “There is only one legitimation of power and that is to share it with others. Power that is not shared, that is not turned into love, is pure domination and oppression.”
Christian Nationalists are more committed to the love of power than to the power of love.
And it exposes a lack of faith because the opposite of faith is not doubt. Doubt is a healthy part of any faith. The opposite of faith is control.
When we stop trusting God, when we stop trusting love, we start taking control ourselves.
Christian Nationalists want to control what we read, who we marry, where we travel, when we have children.
They want to control our minds and our bodies.
“O Ye of little faith.”
Christian Nationalists trust domination because they think domination is what works.
But Jesus revealed that the true power of the universe is not domination, but love.
In Daoism, they teach that over time the soft overcomes the hard.
The water wears down the rock. The wind takes out the mountain. The grass upends the concrete. “The meek … inherit the earth.”
Violence may win in the short run, but in the end, love always wins.
Jesus said this kingdom of God is in our midst. It’s hiding in plain sight. Heaven is already here inside of us. Above us. All around us.
On my mom’s side my granddad was a Baptist preacher. But on my dad’s side, my Grandpa Talarico never went to church, but he was one of the most generous, compassionate, moral people I’ve ever met.
He was an immigrant from Italy whose family saw firsthand the dangers of mixing church and state.
He settled in the Texas hill country, and on Sunday mornings he would take these long walks through the wildflowers and the live oaks, and he would take me with him.
He said it was the best chance to see G.O.D., the Great Out Doors.
Biologists tell us that everything in nature is connected and evolving toward greater union.
Anthropologists tell us that our ability to share and corporate is humanity’s superpower.
And astrophysicists tell us that the universe is just gentle enough to make our existence possible.
This universe of ours is nothing but gratuitous grace.
Teilhard wrote that the very physical universe is love.
We see it in the harmonies of music, the principles of mathematics, the patterns of nature.
We are all expressions of that creative power.
We are the universe becoming aware of itself.
As children of God, children of the cosmos, we are loved unconditionally, indiscriminately, infinitely.
No achievement can add to it.
No mistake can take from it.
No amount of church going or church missing can change it.
That’s truly deserving of the title, “Good News.”
We are made by love, with love, to love.
I call that love God. You may use a different word, and that’s okay.
“There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
We can cure the disease of Christian Nationalism.
We can protect against the virus of religious extremism with healthy religion.
The great faith traditions of the world have so much to offer us in this time of global crisis.
Hinduism’s ahimsa provides an alternative to the logic of violence.
Buddhist meditation provides an alternative to the abuse of our attention.
Judaism’s Sabbath provides an alternative to the demands of capitalism.
And in a world where everything can be bought and sold including the earth itself, Native American traditions provide an alternative to ecological extraction.
It’s hard. It is so hard to protect your spirit in a world trying to kill it.
That’s why we need faith communities like this one.
That’s why we need stories and traditions and practices that heal our soul and transform our mind.
Every time on this sanctuary that we say the prayers, sing the hymns, sprinkle the water, eat the bread, drink the wine, we’re tuning our hearts.
Our Buddhist friends tell us that it takes practice.
Neuroscientists tell us that we can become kinder, more empathetic if we work at it.
Things like love, peace, and hope, they require strength training, a gym for the heart.
So every week we gather here to sing our songs and tell our stories just for the opportunity in the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, “dwell in the ultimate.” Together. Just for a moment.
And that’s almost better than a cold glass of beer.
I invite you now to your own reflection on these words.
Veterans have served the United States of America with valor and honor.
Veterans do not ask what political side you are on.
Veterans are not suckers or losers.
Project 2025 plans on cutting Veteran’s Disability Benefits. This is no way to honor any veteran who has honorably served this country.
It’s time to honor all veterans who have honored this country, the United States of America, with their service.
Some veterans, like my husband, did not wait to be drafted in order to serve our country.
If you want to know more about what a veteran will do for the USA and the world, please consider reading one of the books my husband, John Hourihan, wrote.
John T. Hourihan, Jr.
Other Books written by John T. Hourihan Jr. include:
John’s first book is about how to coach youth and adult baseball:
The following book is a book John wrote with his daughter, Mandy Eppley, sharing their converging memoirs:
John also has books on Kindle:
God Bless Everyone Everywhere, especially our veterans.
Darkness is the lack of Light, naturally. It does no good to focus on the darkness of life. Fighting darkness is like fighting a ghost. The solution is to turn on your contagious and welcoming Light of Love without conditions, which is empathy and compassion instead of harsh judgment.
Focus on the Light, Love and Liberty for all, not just for a select few, or for people who only believe and/or look like you. Broaden your comprehension. Think deeper than simple sayings. Be the change you wish to see in the world through the light-filled lens of understanding illuminated by the Light of knowledge through non-violence.
It’s all about harmonizing with the Light, the Love, Peace, the Joy, which are all aspects of your I Am Presence, which is the Light and Love of your Spirit/Soul, your God-Force guiding and acting through your conscience. This is the same thing as recognizing your Great Presence animating your Life through your Higher Mental and Emotional Bodies. It is in harmonizing and balancing your Light and dark sides of your personality and awareness of who and what you are, a divine aspect of Eternal Universal Life Force Energy acting in the world right where you are at this moment in time.
Now is the time of New Age of Progress: building up, working together for the greater good of humanity at home and abroad.
Follow in the footsteps of justice for all human beings, eradicating lies, conspiracies and under-handed thoughts, words, and actions. Your thoughts matter. Raise them to a higher level of honesty rather than follow the leader of lesser minds. Your words matter. Stop touting conspiracies as if they were the same thing as truth fueled by friends who simply do not know better. Have compassion for them too, because they are like wolves in sheep’s clothing. Lying leaders have fallen victim to false truths for self-aggrandizement purposes. Even then, have compassion for them. They are deceived. Follow the example of Ghandi, for example.
Your actions matter, because truth matters. We will all reap the seeds we have sown. Money is not the bottom line. Those who would vote for people who promise to earn them more money will gladly sell their soul to the highest bidder. That’s what a prostitute does. However, the cost for selling out your Spirit/Soul will rob you of your integrity and ultimately diminish you.
Follow the Limitless Living Light of inspiration, solution, and good government for all, not only for a select few at the top. Top-heavy spires topple far too easily, crushing those below them.
There is room for everyone in this beautiful world of ours. Stop listening to the fear mongers who stir the pot of dysfunction for their unholy gain as if only fear of lack and loss is what is to be counted. This is the hoarder’s mentality. There is enough available on this life-giving planet of ours if only we would share.
Earth is our Garden of Eden and you and I are its caretakers, both of it and every human being living upon its fertile land and those we welcome into our beautiful human mosaic tapestry. Not one of us is any better or worth more than any other of us. Only those with runaway egos believe in such nonsense.
This is what the United States really looks like, United Humanity, not only white Americans.
The only problem is if or when you find yourself in any kind of cult. How are you supposed to know if that has happened to you?
“YOU MIGHT BE IN A CULT” by Eric Swalwell ~ This is How You Can Tell
The following was delivered by Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) on June 4, 2024 in a hearing to the Republicans in the House Judiciary Oversight Committee:
“My colleagues, none of this today that you are bringing makes sense. Your inconsistencies, your hypocrisy, your sycophancy, unless you are in a cult.
“And guys, I’m starting to think you are in a cult. That is your right, but it is not your responsibility.
“I promise you, that is not what your constituents would want.
“So if you believe in state’s rights, except when a jury in that state convicts your nominee for president, you might be in a cult.
“If you claim to back the blue but want to defund the police, when the police go to your nominee’s house to retrieve national security secrets, you might be in a cult.
“If you’re supporting a guy whose felony convictions prevent him from getting a security clearance, you might be in a cult.
“And if the guy you’re supporting for president has felony convictions that prevent him from going to
I have spoken with people who still believe in Republican lies and conspiracies as if they are truth. These people are still my friends “across the aisle” because I refuse to let a difference of political or religious opinion, even on such a weighty matter, stop our friendship. There is always hope for truth to prevail.
They believe the Republican indoctrination because these lies and conspiracies are still being proclaimed from pulpits of continued indoctrinations, both political and religious, and even in social groups in their secret meetings.
The inconsistencies, hypocrisy, and sycophancy are still found in the heartbeat of the Republican cult followers as if this would-be sinister and maligned Big Lie, duped by their fearful leaders, were true.
It is time to uncover all their covert deceptions because truth matters.
Have you ever wondered if you were wrong in your listening to false information and indoctrination?
It is time for human decency, truth, and honor.
It is time to shine a light on all lies and conspiracies. The people I have spoken with say that it is the Democrats who are lying to their followers.
If that is the case, say these lies and conspiracies out loud. Climb out from the heavy rock of your indoctrinations and peacefully prove your point. Most will not do this because their claims are so ridiculous.
Fear is a powerful motivator. But remember, fear is also an acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real. This is how cults work.
This election matters. Do not let fear of discovering that you are wrong stop you. There is more for you to know. Don’t let fear and/or embarrassment stop you from finding out the truth for yourself.
Do more research. It is possible to go to non-biased sources to check out your “facts,” such as mainstream news outlets: Reuters, AP, NPR, New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Bloomberg News, The Atlantic, and Politico. These are not left-wing, nor right-wing opinion news sources.
Allow yourself to hear something different, but don’t stop there. Allow yourself to ask deeper questions, like how this new information could possibly be true, without the negative spin you are used to hearing accompanying it. Try to understand viewpoints other than what is familiar to you. There is more for you to know.
UNIVERSAL WISDOM ENLIGHTENMENT MASTERY 