Rev. Naomi King's Profile

If you’re lucky enough to live someplace with wholesome running water, go ahead, turn on a tap, fill a cup, turn off the tap, and drink mindfully, attentive to the gift of good water and how dependent life is upon... Continue reading

Posted 4 days ago at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Pleading For The People

I think there are so many Biblical stories about people choosing wrongly not because I believe the Holy is punitive and vindictive, but because I find that discerning what to do and how to do it well is probably one... Continue reading

Posted Jul 5, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Finding Ourselves in the Wilderness

If you’ve never visited the Sinai or the Red Sea or the western edge of Egypt, take a peek at a map and ask yourself the same question generations have asked before you: why did it take forty years for... Continue reading

Posted Jun 26, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Wilderness, Whining, and Gratitude

Holly Near wrote a wonderful folk resistance anthem, "Singing For Our Lives”. (Holly Near, "Singing For Our Lives”, 1979 Hereford Music). I learned to sing this protest anthem with lots of other LGBTQIA folk as we carried on in a... Continue reading

Posted Jun 18, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Prayer for Father's Day 2019

Beloved, shelter us with your grace as we remember the fathers we miss, the ones passed from this vale or from our lives in other ways. May we cherish the blessings and heal from the heartache, carrying forth in love... Continue reading

Posted Jun 13, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Responsibility, Penance, and Blessings

The reality of being human is that we will make mistakes, break vows, and hurt one another, sometimes intentionally and rather often unintentionally. We can be jealous. We can misread, misunderstand and disbelieve one another. We can lose trust and... Continue reading

Posted Jun 12, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Our Ancestral Houses

This week we begin reflecting on the Book of Numbers, with Numbers 1:1-4:20. This first section of Numbers belongs to the Priestly writing tradition and concerns itself with the people’s first days after slavery. How do we organize ourselves to... Continue reading

Posted Jun 5, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Choosing Our Place in the Story

Leviticus ends reminding us of where we have come from and what all these prescriptions and proscriptions for behavior are about: once we were enslaved and now we are free. Sure there’s the at-the-time-it-was-written-traditional blessing-curse formula (do this and receive... Continue reading

Posted May 28, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Debt, Redemption, and Loving One Another

Americans have a lot of debt. The national debt is above $22 trillion and consumer debt is around $14 trillion. The ACLU’s report, “A Pound of Flesh: The Criminalization of Private Debt” which found people pursued for as little as... Continue reading

Posted May 21, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Space for Wonder, Atonement, and Joy

In our 24/7/365 world, where there is always more to be done, where we’re connected globally and aware of terrors, disasters, and troubles beyond our neighborhoods, where many struggle to sleep even when they’re exhausted, and many struggle to find... Continue reading

Posted May 17, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Moral Speech and Loving One Another

When we study Leviticus, we’re looking at two significant contributions that make up the text. One is usually called P (Priestly) and the other is H (Holiness Legislation), which was added later just before the Jewish people were exiled to... Continue reading

Posted May 8, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Center Text and Interpretation

Whose experiences, perspectives, and voices are at the center of sacred texts and the history of interpreting those texts matters. This week’s selection, Leviticus 14:1-15:33, is particularly illustrative of these truths. The sacred text discusses three forms of ordinary bodily... Continue reading

Posted Apr 12, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Preparing to Meet the Holy

Leviticus is a lengthy meditation on how we prepare to meet the Holy. This week we encounter Leviticus 12:1-13:59, which details returning from an ordinary state after childbirth to an elevated state, that is, before heading to ritual life and... Continue reading

Posted Apr 4, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Food and Faithful Promises

Food is a big deal. How we nourish ourselves says so much about who we are and what we believe. Our food choices might reflect our natal culture or our aspirational culture, our spiritual or religious or non-spiritual culture, a... Continue reading

Posted Mar 28, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

3 Spiritual Sieves: Kindness, Equity, and Justice

What we do matters. How we do it matters. Our intentions, our actions, and our results matter as we seek to cultivate our relationship with the Holy and to fulfill our faithful promises. Both Leviticus 6:1-8:36 and Jeremiah 7:21-8:3; 9:22-23,... Continue reading

Posted Mar 20, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Offerings & Responsibility in Sacred Relationship

In any healthy relationship, we give and we receive. We recognize the goodness in the relationship. We renew that goodness in lots of tiny ways: daily greetings, hugs, showing up for an otherwise bad day, staying present through tough times,... Continue reading

Posted Mar 15, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Spirit, Vulnerability and Craft

This week’s Parashah (Parashat Pekudei: Exodus 38:21-40:38), as last week’s reading did, opens a door to us to consider how it is to have heart to create and craft beauty. Last week, just as the Holy is described at the... Continue reading

Posted Mar 8, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Through The Sabbath Gates

Parashat Vayakhel (Exodus 35:1-38:20) teaches about Sabbath-keeping and about meaningful work in freedom. As free people, both rest and work have different meanings than when the people were enslaved, such different meanings that we might discuss dignity and work in... Continue reading

Posted Mar 1, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Arrogance, Humility and Spiritual Growth

Parashat Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35) offers us more attentiveness to worship and other spiritual practices. But in the middle of this passage, we find the story of the Golden Calf, and the condemnation of being “stiff-necked” or arrogant. Arrogance, in... Continue reading

Posted Feb 22, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Stretching the Heart

Spiritual practices do many things, like orient us towards the Holy, or strengthen our connection to all of being. Some practices strengthen our breathing and others strengthen our body and yet others strengthen our reasoning and our feeling. Many spiritual... Continue reading

Posted Feb 14, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Building Sanctuaries for Climate Justice

Climate change has already displaced and will increasingly displace so many people, across and within national borders. One of the persistent fears during evacuations is that folks will not be permitted to return and will lose everything they value, from... Continue reading

Posted Feb 7, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Climate Change, Strangers, and Love's Call

Moving through world as I do, I am daily dependent on the kindness and knowledge of strangers. Most of these are strangers I will never meet, like the people maintaining ocean buoys that track water temperatures and aid in forecasting... Continue reading

Posted Jan 31, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Nurturing Empathy and Setting Limits

When suffering is increased in our world through obstinacy and turning away from the cries of the beleaguered, dismissing or downplaying those cries, or suggesting that those now out of resources can simply arrange themselves some more like the people... Continue reading

Posted Jan 26, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

For Hearts to Fly

There is so much suffering and grief in this life, in our world. How we do we ever sing anything besides dirges or dance passionately or dream of unknown worlds or launch ourselves into discovering what is yet to be... Continue reading

Posted Jan 12, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0

Beginning Here: Love The Earth

Home: it can mean so many different things to each of us. Home is a place we live much of the time, or a family that raised us, or an escape from work, or a nest of love and care,... Continue reading

Posted Jan 6, 2019 at The Wonderment

Comment

0