we need beauty as well as bread

Over the past year, I have found renewed joy, nourishment, and a profound sense of place in nature. Working in both northern and southern California has put me close to some of the country’s best national parks and I have been grateful for the resources and the time to visit several of them. 

Driving and especially hiking through such varied topography – from giant redwoods to high desert, and seaside cliffs to peaks in the Sierras – has filled me with wonder. I have been humbled by the astounding variety of plants and trees, of landscapes carved from the slow movement of glaciers or the fiery power of a volcanic eruption. The expansiveness of sky and sea has inspired prayers of gratitude. The sound of an ecstatic bird chorus or the twilight gurgle of frogs has motivated me to lift my voice in praise of the Creator.

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residency in Cincinnati

Join me for a weekend residency in Cincinnati, Ohio from May 20-22. We'll SING sacred music from diverse cultures and traditions, EXPLORE leadership practices that encourage and animate congregational singing, and REFLECT on ways that worship can be life-giving, inclusive, and prophetic.

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music that nourishes and sustains

Music-making, especially singing within a spiritual community, is soul food. It shapes and integrates our experience and understanding of the Holy. It gives voice to our heartfelt praise and prayer. It connects us to other voices and bodies around us. It moves energy within a worship space. It engages our whole being - body, mind, breath, spirit. Words and tunes continue to sing in us even when we are not fully conscious of them.

But as I work with congregations around the country, I frequently see that the formative, generative, and enlivening potential of music is unrecognized or diminished. While congregations might be able to articulate a theology of worship (why they sing), their musical practices (how they sing) can be disconnected from, contradict, or subvert, their theology.

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