Rev. Don Erickson

"I left my house this morning. Bells ringing filled the air." (from "The Rising," by Bruce Springsteen) This lyric hits me deep, son.  Bruce Springsteen’s record The Rising and the song of the same name came out in 2002, less than a year after 9/11. The record was one of those rare records that offered catharsis to the culture from which it sprung. The whole record was a venture in pastoral care, really, what dad does for a living. In the record, Bruce plays minister to a people, the American people, giving us music that lays out all the emotions Americans were experiencing in the wake of 9/11. Bruce sat with us, mirrored out words and thoughts, felt the pain and horror, anger and fear with us. Yet at the same time he rose above it and reached passed the emptiness into the fullness of love, compassion, and its healing. We were new to New York City in September 2001, your mom and dad were. I actually began seminary on September Eleventh . Mom happened to b...

* Based on sermon but with different title John 13: 5, 12-17 He poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Master,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Master and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. If you read the story of the Passion of Christ with new eyes, as if for the first time, I think it becomes pretty obvious that this figure called Jesus of Nazareth is a figure not to be ignored. He is pushing buttons. H...

Part 1 I must begin with a cute story. As you may know, Holly and I taught conversational English in Korea some 16 years ago. We taught both children and adults. One middle school class I had gave me a nickname. The Korean word for money is DON, spelled in English usually as D-O-N. One of the boys when he saw my name made the connection and started calling me “money.” At the end of the class, a couple of the  boys gave me this very hat. They said the D is for D-o-n. There is a kind of related story that applies to the D word we are going to talk about today, dawn – D-A-W-N. There was a woman in the church I grew up in. She had a really thick Boston accent. When she would say my name, it sounded more like dawn than Don. Actually, when I was young, she called me “dawny.” When I got older, she started calling me “dawn.” I am not sure why I remember that. But I do. Well, here is the connection – the cameras here today are being used to film a documentary on the Korean sa...

THOU shalt love thy God. There must be for me a deep sense of relatedness to God. This relatedness is the way by which there shall open for me more and more springs of energy and power, which will enable me to thread life’s mysteries with life’s clue. It is this, and this alone, that will make it possible for me to stand anything that life can or may do to me. I shall not waste any effort in trying to reduce God to my particular logic. Here in the quietness, I shall give myself in love to God. Thou shalt love thy neighbor. How I must seek ever the maintenance of the kind of relatedness to others that will feed the springs of kindness and sympathy in me! I shall study how I may be tender without being soft; gracious without being ingratiating; kind without being sentimental; and understanding without being judgmental. Here in the quietness, I shall give myself in love to my neighbors. Thou shalt love Thyself. I must learn to love myself with detachment. I must have no attitude toward m...

THE place of prayer & meditation in the life of modern man is limited & hedged in by the multiplicity of details to which attention must be given as a normal part of daily experience. It is true that in some sense a man’s whole life may be regarded as his prayer. Ordinarily, what a man does is an expression of his intent, & his intent is the focusing of his desiring, & his desires are the prayers of his heart. But such explanations are far from satisfactory. There is no argument needed for the necessity of taking time out for being alone, for withdrawal, for being quiet without & still within. The sheer physical necessity is urgent because the body & the entire nervous system cry out for the healing waters of silence. One could not begin the cultivation of the prayer life at a more practical point than deliberately to seek each day, & several times a day, a lull in the rhythm of daily doing, a period when nothing happens that dem&s active participation...

"A BEAUTIFUL and significant phrase, “Island of Peace within one’s own soul.” The individual lives his life in the midst of a wide variety of stresses and strains. There are many tasks in which he is engaged that are not meaningful to him even though they are important in secondary ways. There are many responsibilities that are his by virtue of training, or family, or position. Again and again, decisions must be made as to small and large matters; each one involves him in devious ways. No one is ever free from the peculiar pressures of his own life. Each one has to deal with the evil aspects of life, with injustices inflicted upon him and injustices which he wittingly or unwittingly inflicts upon others. We are all of us deeply involved in the throes of our own weaknesses and strengths, expressed often in the profoundest conflicts within our own souls. The only hope for surcease, the only possibility of stability for the person, is to establish an Island of Peace within one’s...