Rev. Don Erickson

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...

The religious life is one that is too often marked by something I think is not helpful. In some ways, this unhelpful practice mirrors the ways of material labor and production. It mirrors the ways of economics when it should reside beyond it in some sense. We see it explained very well with a common practice this time of year. The New Year’s Resolution. It works something like this. I notice something in my life that is missing. For example, I notice that I am not exercising like I should and am gaining some pounds. That is the problem. The solution – a resolution to exercise. Resolution is a promise made to one’s self to solve a problem. But it does not stop there. After the resolution comes the actual work of making the resolution a reality This resolution-based idea is what I will call the goal-attainment model. I set a goal and I work to realize that goal. But what happens when despite how much we work to attain something, we don’t attain it? What happens when desp...

Jesus and the Shepherds take their places in our Creche. They go together as they go together in the climax of the nativity story. Jesus and the Shepherds are tied together, and will be so forever. Why shepherds? Why did God first give the good news about Jesus’ arrival to the shepherds? Yes, Jesus’ family of course knew. But the shepherds were the first neutral party to hear the news. Why? There are a few reasons, I’d say. I give them quickly before I get to the heart of what I want to say. John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, will later call Jesus "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."  So, the shepherds come to see this new lamb who will change their lives.  Then, there is the even-then revered scripture, the 23 rd Psalm – "The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want."   The Gospels will later point to Jesus as this Good Shepherd.   So, the shepherds are also coming to visit a fellow shepherd, the shepherd’s shepherd, the sheph...

So a couple weeks ago, I took Corey to a department store. Of course, we walked toward the toy section. And upon seeing signs of Christmas, what exactly I cannot recall, Corey says, “What!? Christmas stuff already. It isn’t Halloween yet.” I am sure he learned this from me, but it was funny hearing him say it, and so expressively. Who hasn’t said this? Add in the yearly anthem of resistance, which we all can bet on hearing soon – that of Keep Christ in Christmas – and we have a couple examples of unconscious Christmas traditions, traditions that tap into negativity amid the positivity of the season. However, when you look at these two traditional complaints we all either say or hear, they are built on a misconception. Both the “Christmas stuff already?” and “Keep Christ in Christmas” conceits imply that there is something novel, something newly wrong that we need to resist, some traditions we need to preserve. Yet looking at the history of such things, we would see that these ...