http://127.0.0.1/~ericshepherd/trinity/trinity/index.php en-us Trinity Episcopal Church Sermons from Trinity Episcopal Church in Buffalo, New York. Sun, 19 Nov 2006 11:30:00 -0500 Sun, 05 Nov 2006 11:30:00 -0500 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss tech@trinitybuffalo.org http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_29_2012_1030.mp3 But all we need to do in order to recover the vigor of Christianity, is listen to the Gospel stories as they were told, and soon the forced harmonization and highly developed theological images of Jesus come unglued. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_29_2012_1030.mp3 Fri, 3 Feb 2012 16:37:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_29_2012_700.mp3 The dramatic difference between spiritual journeys as described by mystics and spiritual masters, versus novels and movies, is…well, drama. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_29_2012_700.mp3 Fri, 3 Feb 2012 16:32:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_22_2012_1030.mp3 Instead, I recommend a few small, practical weapons of spiritual guerrilla warfare as an intervention; little things to cause friction, stimulate, and rattle us awake now and again – or at least alert us to our slumber. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_22_2012_1030.mp3 Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:23:01 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_22_2012_700.mp3 I had the privilege of attending a death this week. That may seem like an oxymoron if you don’t hang out with death on a regular basis, but standing in the presence of the coming of death brings forth the full flavor of life’s preciousness. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_22_2012_700.mp3 Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:17:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_15_2012_1030.mp3 In the presence of gratitude and grateful people, we need not fear blame or shame or anger or resentment. And when that happens, it is a new day. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_15_2012_1030.mp3 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:01:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_15_2012_700.mp3 So tonight as we prepare to light candles, let me invite you into a small moment of solitude, in which, no matter whom you came with, you enter all by yourself. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_15_2012_700.mp3 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:34:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_08_2012_1030.mp3 We think of science and religion as oil and water but in fact, science has made great contributions to Christianity; and, if the Secularized culture would allow it, Christian ethics and moral theology could make a huge contribution to setting appropriate boundaries on science. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_08_2012_1030.mp3 Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:14:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_08_2012_700.mp3 To PRACTICE our spirituality, no matter what it is we are practicing, is to be thoughtful, intentional, and engaged… not a lump. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_08_2012_700.mp3 Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:09:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_01_2012_1030.mp3 Well…what’s it like when someone calls you by someone else’s name? What happens when someone knows you by the wrong name? Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/01_01_2012_1030.mp3 Fri, 6 Jan 2012 19:29:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_12_25_1030.mp3 We can’t keep hyper-sensitivity to it because… well, because we just can’t; but in every single moment God is emerging with all the drama of an infant head glistening for the first time in light. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_12_25_1030.mp3 Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:36:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_12_24_1030.mp3 I want to talk about the difference between “PreseNTS” and “Presence”. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_12_24_1030.mp3 Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:25:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_12_24_500.mp3 Then this story hit me like thunder -- this story we heard tonight, rumbled through me like an earthen tremor. It stopped me cold. I stopped in my tracks, just barely down the hall. “Wait!” I said out loud as if he could hear me. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_12_24_500.mp3 Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:18:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_12_18_1030.mp3 When you were little the world was liquid and they poured it into you in small doses and gulps even. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_12_18_1030.mp3 Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:12:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_12_11_1030.mp3 In so many ways religion, and maybe especially Christianity, hides us from this hunger for God out of a fear that it will reveal our wrongness and the damnation of our imperfect lives. We fear our mortality and can no more lay in stillness in its presence than we can accept the full truth of who we are. And so we concoct mind games and doctrines and obsessive rituals that calm the animals of our fear. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_12_11_1030.mp3 Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:53:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_12_11_700.mp3 The history of human spiritual wisdom is born and buried on high places. It is where we go to breathe again and to hear the still small voice that calls to us by name. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_12_11_700.mp3 Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:46:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_12_04_1030.mp3 Here’s some Advent truth: Christmas ain’t history and it ain’t fact but it is true. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_12_04_1030.mp3 Wed, 7 Dec 2011 17:08:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_11_20_700.mp3 So what I am trying to say is that God is inaccessible as prose; but that we have a chance of meeting God as a poem. And I suppose… that is what Trinity@7 is really about. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_11_20_700.mp3 Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:40:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_11_20_1030.mp3 So this is Thanksgiving week, and instead of being mindful of what we have, which is the typical cultural grace we are asked to offer, I would invite us into a different meditation. Where, within our own life, where within our own heart, do we experience joy…pure joy? Not happiness, not self-satisfaction or pride, not pleasure… but joy. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_11_20_1030.mp3 Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:33:01 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_11_13_1030.mp3 But the point is, we all have power and resources and the conversation we have, in this place, cannot about the 1% and the 99% - it must be about the 100%. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_11_13_1030.mp3 Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:27:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_11_06_1030.mp3 The challenge we are given on All Saints’ Day, and every day as a matter of fact, is to ask ourselves if our life is a chronicle of faithful choices or more of a testimony of our service to other gods. Are we, you and I, a chronicle of faithful choices? Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_11_06_1030.mp3 Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:06:01 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_11_06_700.mp3 Think about your people -- you’ve “got people” who have proceeded into the dark already, and whose light continues to shine through your memory. Close friends or family, or even distant teachers across the centuries of time. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_11_06_700.mp3 Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:01:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/10_30_2011_700.mp3 Enjoy the entire Trinity @ 7 service from Sunday, October 30, 2011 Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/10_30_2011_700.mp3 Tue, 1 Nov 2011 14:50:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/10_30_2011_1030.mp3 Jesus is all about power and how we use our power, and the kingdom and the power and the glory that happens when two or three people are gathered together and acting out the love of God. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/10_30_2011_1030.mp3 Tue, 1 Nov 2011 13:41:01 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_07_10_1030.mp3 Over time Christianity, like all religions, learned the value of holding secret truths and passing them out one at a time to those who had demonstrated loyalty. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_07_10_1030.mp3 Thu, 14 Jul 2011 13:17:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_07_10_700.mp3 In truth, you and I are a mess, a broiling torrent of pride and prejudice as well as love and glory. We contain within ourselves, within our single little Self, all the good and bad we have ever imagined or done. It is US, all of it. We are not the good guys any more than we are the bad guys – we are both, over and over and over again. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_07_10_700.mp3 Thu, 14 Jul 2011 13:14:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_07_03b_1030.mp3 Burdens and yokes… each of us have them, and some of us, like old lumbering oxen, are no longer even aware of the weight we carry soldiering on as we do through life. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_07_03b_1030.mp3 Fri, 8 Jul 2011 13:31:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_06_26_700.mp3 Trinity @ 7 podcast from June 26, 2011 Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_06_26_700.mp3 Fri, 1 Jul 2011 14:13:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_06_26_1030.mp3 In this scheme of things, “the little ones” who Jesus refers to metaphorically in today’s reading, amounted to something unpleasant you stepped in. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_06_26_1030.mp3 Fri, 1 Jul 2011 14:05:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_06_19_1030.mp3 watching the bugs and the birds ...and the frogs hop and eat and play around the pond, it was clear to me that they all belong in that place. It is also equally clear to me that in the love of God… we also belong – we all also belong. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_06_19_1030.mp3 Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:11:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_06_19_700.mp3 Sermon from Trinity @ 7 service (June 19, 2011) Steve Lane http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_06_19_700.mp3 Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:58:01 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_06_12_1030.mp3 The feast of Pentecost, which is what the Church remembers this day, is a primal recollection about how all of this church-thing began. It began in fear of the authorities, and with a dreadful awareness of mutual vulnerability and interdependence… and from there it grew into an archipelago of diverse communities spread along the Mediterranean ocean from Palestine to Rome. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_06_12_1030.mp3 Wed, 15 Jun 2011 18:46:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_06_05_1030.mp3 Bishop Franklin's sermon given at the 10:30am service on Sunday, June 5, 2011 The Rt. Rev. R. William Franklin http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_06_05_1030.mp3 Mon, 6 Jun 2011 14:53:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_06_05_700.mp3 I mean seriously, there is so much that is astoundingly good and pleasant and amazing and awesome and we are drunk, not with inspiration and beauty but with information. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_06_05_700.mp3 Mon, 6 Jun 2011 14:40:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_29_1030.mp3 God, I need to confess my sin… “I love you.” God, I really screwed up this time… “I love you.” God, I am so ashamed… “I love you.” God, I am such a mess… “I love you.” God, I can’t stand this pain any more… “I love you.” God, I feel so alone… “I love you.” God, I am so lost… “I love you.” God, my life is so dark right now…”I love you.” Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_29_1030.mp3 Fri, 3 Jun 2011 19:02:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_22_1030.mp3 In the end, or in the middle for that matter, it is not the truth of ideas and beliefs that hold us – it is the love of God that holds us. It is other people who have also experienced the love of God, that hold us. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_22_1030.mp3 Tue, 24 May 2011 18:37:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_22_700.mp3 As long as we are trying to feed our hunger we are like a moth hell-bent upon the flame; and when we practice simple presence in the company of our hunger, we are like the burning bush that is engulfed in the shirt of flame yet not consumed. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_22_700.mp3 Tue, 24 May 2011 18:22:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_15_700.mp3 We are each having a different but the same experience. We are a community. And, just for a time on Sunday night, we are safe. Teresa Maciocha http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_15_700.mp3 Tue, 24 May 2011 18:17:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_15_1030.mp3 So I want to suggest that re-learning to hear the voice of the holy begins with acting as if we can hear it… even before we actually can. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_15_1030.mp3 Mon, 16 May 2011 14:20:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_08_1030.mp3 Do you love me? Then I am going to listen to you. Do you love me? Then I am going to watch you, to see what you do and how you do it. Do you love me? Then I will want to know, sooner or later, why you do and think and feel the way you do. Love is compelling – it draws us into itself. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_08_1030.mp3 Mon, 9 May 2011 12:59:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_08_700.mp3 Moving away from the demand of an either/or life, which is so predominant at our moment in history, and into the embrace and exploration of a dance with the holy that is both intimate and distant, is the way of health and wholeness. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_08_700.mp3 Mon, 9 May 2011 12:49:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_01_700.mp3 It seems to me, in my very small wisdom, that a prayer is a life. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_01_700.mp3 Tue, 3 May 2011 13:40:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_01_1030.mp3 Are we willing to go looking for the image of God in prison? What prisons are you going to explore this week? The Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_05_01_1030.mp3 Tue, 3 May 2011 13:11:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_04_24_1030.mp3 What we SEE is rarely what other people see. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_04_24_1030.mp3 Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:04:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010_04_17_1030.mp3 So, Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday… I guess it doesn’t really matter in the end. They both tell a story about US – about what happens when someone like Jesus gets too close. We kill them. We just out and out kill them. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010_04_17_1030.mp3 Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:56:01 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010_04_10_1030.mp3 Do not put your trust in yourself, as if you can escape the present moment and live all alone in your own hidden valley away from chaos and its fallout. Trust God. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010_04_10_1030.mp3 Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:36:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_04_10_700.mp3 And as we begin to hear the voice of God as it speaks to us, in its own strange sounds and languages, we may then, finally, learn to speak. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_04_10_700.mp3 Tue, 12 Apr 2011 19:14:01 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_04_03_1030.mp3 What I know now that I didn’t know then, is that I don’t get to pick the good guys and the bad guys. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_04_03_1030.mp3 Mon, 4 Apr 2011 14:46:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_04_03_700.mp3 To cross socio-economic, ethnic, racial, gender and sexuality boundaries, and develop authentic relationships across hardened cultural divides, is a primary and powerful tool of spiritual practice. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_04_03_700.mp3 Mon, 4 Apr 2011 14:40:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_03_27_1030.mp3 If we deny our prejudices and our bigotries and our judgments then there is almost no possibility of our healing. Of course, the minute we acknowledge them, there we will be on the ‘other side of good’ – which is why we deny them. We do not like the way it feels to be on the ‘other side of good.’ Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_03_27_1030.mp3 Mon, 4 Apr 2011 14:09:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_02_27_1030.mp3 WARNING: this sermon is not linear. It will follow a winding road to its conclusion, but it will get there. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_02_27_1030.mp3 Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:24:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_02_27_700.mp3 Spirituality is communal. Individuals may roam around within the walls of sacred wisdom, but we roam within a community that came before us and that will long out last us. We are attached as if by a thousand silken spider strands to a web of human beings, and our wisdom and well-being depends utterly upon those to whom we are attached. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_02_27_700.mp3 Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:17:01 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_02_13_1030.mp3 What we will receive for our efforts to hold without understanding, to hold without insisting upon answers, are more and greater pieces of the puzzle. The rebus will grow larger not smaller. As for us, we will grow deeper if not smarter, wiser if not more confident. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_02_13_1030.mp3 Wed, 16 Feb 2011 19:03:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_02_13_700.mp3 Humor, absurdity, farce, comedy… they are core elements of a deep spirituality – of divine presence even. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_02_13_700.mp3 Wed, 16 Feb 2011 13:37:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_01_30_1030.mp3 To BE humble is to live in full awareness of our need for God; of our dependence upon God for life and blessedness, and to resist the delusion of self-sufficiency. To DO justice is to BE faithful to our relationships. To LOVE Kindness is to love one another AS IF we shared the same womb. To BE humble is to live in full awareness of our need for God. With that summation in Micah’s imaginary cosmic court, the prosecution sits down and waits to see if the defense has a case. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_01_30_1030.mp3 Fri, 4 Feb 2011 17:01:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_01_30_700.mp3 So try taking a little inventory of your rarest wounds – the very pink and tender ones. And then, imaginatively, place them on your lap as if a small child… and coddle them. Love them like the tender, malformed, small and neglected children that they are. Give them some time and some affection and just plain acceptance. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_01_30_700.mp3 Fri, 4 Feb 2011 16:57:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_01_23_1030.mp3 The podcast and text associated with this sermon is presented by the members of the Trinity Community who just returned from a trip to El Salvador. Holly & Pat Maloney, Denise Mlynarick and Lisa Jo Schaeffer http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_01_23_1030.mp3 Tue, 25 Jan 2011 14:35:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_01_02_700.mp3 Before we chase the wisdom of others, we should harvest well the home-grown wisdom of our own lives. There is a great deal of wisdom we have left un-harvested, or fallen upon the threshing floor. There is much about God and life and love and hope we hold in the womb of our own lives. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_01_02_700.mp3 Tue, 4 Jan 2011 14:43:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_01_02_1030.mp3 Even though the calendar year has turned a page, and 2010 has already yellowed; and even though December 25th is now stacked behind the memory of several Bowl Games already; it is still Christmas. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2011_01_02_1030.mp3 Tue, 4 Jan 2011 14:39:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010_12_26_1030.mp3 In the beginning… God had a dream for your life even back then before anyone knew your life had begun. It has been growing, forming, fighting through resistance and bringing you back from wrong turns all along. God’s best hope, God’s dream for you, is there at the center of your life and our life’s work is to discern that dream and learn to live in concert with it. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010_12_26_1030.mp3 Tue, 4 Jan 2011 14:31:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010_02_28_1030.Mp3 So this was Jesus’ tour group: Elrod, Darnell, Henry, Sonja and Ted. Their first stop: A radical fair housing group rehabbing an old house. The inside of the house had been gutted and was divided by stud-walls you could still see through. It was so cold they could see their breath and feel the wind when it whipped up. Jesus told them how the organization was employing neighborhood unemployed young men and women, training them in the old fashioned way of apprenticing. Each house had one or two skilled workers mentoring the neighborhood kids. They accessed as few federal dollars as possible so they would not be beholding to the politicians or regulators. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010_02_28_1030.Mp3 Mon, 1 Mar 2010 18:01:01 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010_02_21_1030.Mp3 Jesus was stunned into silence. The images and emotions of the day were blowing through his brain at a hundred miles an hour. He was so full of excitement he felt as though he would explode. Then, he told us, looking our way for the first time but only out of the corner of his eye, (never turning his face in our direction) that he heard that whisper again – or was it a memory? Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010_02_21_1030.Mp3 Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:36:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010_02_14_700.Mp3 All wounds find their depth and can go no deeper, and after a time work their way back to the surface, free like an air bubble rising up from the mud. That is what is so miraculous about the heart. It absorbs so many wounds, so much pain, and then, sooner or later, spits them out again. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010_02_14_700.Mp3 Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:30:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010_02_14_1030.Mp3 In such moments we do not really trust ourselves. We just cannot allow ourselves to be present to miraculous moments. We start thinking. We go right from awe to thought without passing go. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010_02_14_1030.Mp3 Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:53:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010-01-24-700.Mp3 So… I guess what I am suggesting is that we pry open our 21st century secularized and highly sophisticated thinking; and come down off our high horse, and get down and play in the mud of our existence, and mix it up with a lot of very human-centric kinds of imagination. Get down, get basic, get elemental, get primitive, get very poetic and human with God. Bring God a little closer. Put your tiny little fingers in that massive hand of God that has held a universe or two. Place your face right in between those massive celestial breasts and say “Amen.” Cuddle up, whisper out loud, and bring God humanly closer. It’s just an exercise. It’s just imagination. It’s just poetry. But heck, so often we live into what we imagine. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010-01-24-700.Mp3 Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:51:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010-01-17-700.Mp3 Well what do you say to a ten-year-old boy who is scared about the global financial crisis that has already made his family’s tenuous hold on life so much more insecure? Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010-01-17-700.Mp3 Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:29:01 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010-01-17-1030.Mp3 It was just a simple act. It was just a simple act of solidarity. It was just a whisper in the wind. Truthfully, we did not have any idea why we were going there – we only thought we knew. Isn’t that so often the way? Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010-01-17-1030.Mp3 Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:19:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010-01-01-jesusinbuffalo.Mp3 Jesus hit a guy and broke his nose. I was just as surprised as you are to hear that Jesus hit a guy but I saw it with my own eyes. It was at Nietzsche’s on Allen Street and it was late, one or one-thirty maybe. We were lucky, to tell you the truth, that we got out of there before the cops came. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010-01-01-jesusinbuffalo.Mp3 Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:45:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010-01-01-sexwithangel.Mp3 My thoughts stuttered over the notion of a favorite phone sex line. He regaled his friend with a litany of descriptions of disembodied voices, each with their own name and special abilities, with whom he had shared sexual intimacy. It was quite the life, Griff explained to his silent companion. He lived on Chinese food and pizza, often delivered along with the cocaine. If he needed groceries or alcohol he had them delivered as well. Within the walls of his domicile he was king of the Wild Things, and this made him exceedingly pleased. His happiness and contentment seemed impossibly complete and for months and months he slept, ate, drank, tooted and cavorted without discovering his fill. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2010-01-01-sexwithangel.Mp3 Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:31:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-12-27-1030.mp3 Every single one of us here has had an encounter with God… or the holy… or the mystical… or whatever doggone thing you want to call it. But even though we have all encountered God, few of us are willing to talk about it; few of us will even acknowledge it to ourselves. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-12-27-1030.mp3 Wed, 6 Jan 2010 15:44:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-12-24-1030.mp3 The Christmas story calls us to get up, to leave that place, to come again into a life that is pregnant with possibilities… whether at ninety-five years old or one-year old. True, they are not the same possibilities at ninety-five as at one, but we are always capable of giving birth to yet one more new love, one more new hope, one more new vision, one more new perspective, one more new possibility. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-12-24-1030.mp3 Wed, 6 Jan 2010 15:39:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-12-24-500.mp3 One small community, sharing food and money and resources with other small communities elsewhere, can empower change that ripples through nations. We know it is true: we’ve seen it and felt it and been touched by it somewhere, sometime, somehow. The smallest ray of loving-kindness has righted the wreck of despair and unexpectedly turned our lives around. It’s happened that way – not in Hollywood and Disney -- but to people I am seeing in front of me throughout this congregation here tonight. It doesn’t take much light to enlighten the darkness. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-12-24-500.mp3 Wed, 6 Jan 2010 15:30:01 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-12-20-700.mp3 We need one another. We need one another like we need oxygen. We do not learn to believe in ourselves until we have experienced someone else believing in us. And if we have never known, from the outside-in, such a kindness, such a love, such a gentleness of inward touch, then we may never get to know it from the inside-out. It is possible of course, for those who have been emotionally starved to death from a very young age, to scratch their way up out of such deprivation, but it requires a miraculous healing, a spiritual healing… not self-healing. Self-healing only comes after spiritual healing. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-12-20-700.mp3 Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:05:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-12-13-700.mp3 If we choose to suck on the straw of resentment, we will shrivel. If we choose to stroke the raw wounds of regret, we shrivel. If we choose to tremble in the shadow of fears, we shrivel. If we choose to hide in a prison of guilt, we shrivel. If we choose to grimace in secret isolation, we shrivel. If we choose to carry the globe upon our shoulders, we shrivel. If we choose to remain a victim, we shrivel. If we choose to warm ourselves on embers of blame, we shrivel. If we choose to insist the world play by our rules, we shrivel. If we choose to gargle with the bile of mistrust, we shrivel. If we choose to be rigid and unyielding, we shrivel. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-12-13-700.mp3 Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:35:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-12-13-1030.mp3 Mary, it says in Luke’s birth narrative, ponders in her heart all that the shepherds and angels tell her. Maybe she did, but as an adult child, her son, Jesus, keeps Mary at a distance. Only in Church mythology, and high doctrines of Mary created by the church centuries after the fact, is there any kind of special relationship between them. We like to look back at that birth through the eyes of everything we imagine we know about Jesus, and we like to wonder about his birth and his mother and his childhood, because we see and hear him as a man who changed the course of history – who in fact, whether we know it or not, acknowledge it or not, change your life and mine. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-12-13-1030.mp3 Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:30:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-12-06-1030.mp3 If we could somehow plug in a laptop to each of our brains – and it won’t be long until it is possible – and we looked at each other’s monitors, we would be surprised to see that we do not all see the same things. Some people’s monitor would be a collage of colorful details, while other’s would be focused upon one giant image that might even be in grayscale. One person would see the pulpit as bigger than it is while someone else would see the altar in dimensions much grander that it measures. On some of your laptops, I would appear as a giant while on others I would be the same size as everyone else, and on still others, I would appear as a little cartoon character yammering away. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-12-06-1030.mp3 Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:59:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-11-22-700.mp3 Stopping to talk with a panhandler, looking him or her in the eyes, responding to him or her like you would any person you know who has asked you for something, whether or not you decide to contribute a coin… that is a small act of love. Pausing, I mean really pausing your body and mind, to look at the salesclerk or bus driver or cashier and breaking out of seeing them in their utilitarian role that is there to help you get your task done… pausing, to make a real human connection, even if only for thirty seconds – that is an act of small love. Affirming a teenager that is not your kid, affirming them in their humanity and in their personhood and offering them an intentional show of dignity and respect, that is an act of small love. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-11-22-700.mp3 Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:22:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-11-22-1030.mp3 We all have them, small or large wounds inflicted by accident or on purpose by someone in our past – distant or near. Resentment is something we nurse. It is not a gulp but a sip… a sip, sip, sip, sip, sip, sip that keeps alive a little coal of anger inside that might otherwise burn out or be forgotten but that we draw on now and again with a kind of perverse pleasure. Some of us do it more than others but everyone I know about has resentment of some kind, from something or someone, somewhere. The thing is, it is impossible feel gratitude and resentment at the same time. It is like oil and water that will not stay together. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-11-22-1030.mp3 Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:11:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-11-15-1030.mp3 It’s an odd thing really: I look at a building like Trinity or a structure like the Hoover dam and what I see is its frailty, while someone else will perceive the magnificence of human capacity. On the other hand, I look up into the stars under a remote Canadian sky, and feel exuberant joy at my infinitesimal stature in the cosmos. Yet that same person who took pleasure in the capacity of human ingenuity, might feel anxious about our obvious and total insignificance beneath the sparkling dome of the sky. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-11-15-1030.mp3 Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:46:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-11-8-700.mp3 Let me tell you this: that turbulence and those seeming dark forces can in fact turn out to be harbingers of light. “Go warn the children of God, tell them of the terrible speed of mercy.” I love that line. Ironically, mercy comes upon the crest of tension, forcefully upon the waves of turbulence, even within the innards of internal woe and conflict. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-11-8-700.mp3 Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:41:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-11-8-1030.mp3 Abundance is a state of mind. It is possible, and you’ve seen it happen, that someone can be surrounded by tremendous good fortune and good company and nonetheless feel bereft and utterly scorned by life. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-11-8-1030.mp3 Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:33:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-11-1-700.mp3 Our hearts know where the dark corner is, and we have hidden there crouched in a stance of self-protection. If we stay there long enough the heart gets “hard and parched up.” Like arthritic joints held too long in the same position, a crouched heart will harden to protect itself, and once hardened, will become parched up. When grace is lost from life, come with a burst of song. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-11-1-700.mp3 Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:28:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-25-700.mp3 We do not have to detach from our bodies to encounter the holy. We do not have to renounce the flesh or try to let go the body and soar with the spirit, in order to exercise the spiritual. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-25-700.mp3 Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:14:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-25-1030.mp3 It is us, just at another moment in history. We are those people who have forgotten who we are and whose we are. That table there, or another like it someplace else, has the power to remind us who we are and whose we are… and to reshape us. We need a table that brings us back to who we are: Creatures made to live in community and connected by a power greater than ourselves. It doesn’t have to be this one. Trinity has no claim on any one of us. Community is chosen. You choose which table and which community. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-25-1030.mp3 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:03:01 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-18-700.mp3 We may not be authors or poets or musicians or any kind of specialist at all… We may be clumsy with words or pitiful at description and woefully untalented. But… every single one of us can learn to listen, can learn to see and hear, the extraordinary in the ordinary. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-18-700.mp3 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:57:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-18-1030.mp3 I do not mean “deny” the story. It happened. Jesus came. Jesus acted. Jesus was executed. But the question is how that makes sense for us? How does that have meaning for us in our world? We don’t interpret life through an Isaiah 53 lens, nor through and Abraham and Isaac lens. That’s why civil religion is more powerful for us than Christianity. That’s why Disney is more powerful for us than Christianity. That’s why Capitalism is more powerful for us than Christianity. It’s not Christianity’s fault – the problems lies with any and all generations that do not reinterpret Jesus through its own powerful lenses. Experience is the lens and we must reinterpret Jesus, and therefore Christianity itself, through the lens of our own common experience. We can’t take religious history, or the history of Christian theology, and suck it like a straw from the past and consume it as if it will somehow feed us all these years later. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-18-1030.mp3 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:48:01 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-11-700.mp3 To be present. To allow ourselves to be present with one another. You see, don’t you, how deeply spiritual that is. It is mindfulness in the extreme. So that is what happens, or what can happen. These two conflicting forms of resistance to death, the one who is dying and those who will go on living, allow the creeping recognition of powerlessness to bring them into acceptance of the inevitable and then… and then… there is nothing to do but be present to and for one another. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-11-700.mp3 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:42:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-11-1030.mp3 So who are we in the Jesus story? We’re not God. We’re not Jesus. We’re not the disciples. We’re not the crowds. We’re not the poor bastards begging for health or food. We’re not the Judeans clamoring for a Liberator. We’re not the Temple clergy snarling at the upstart rabbi. Who are we? We have a silent part with no lines. We are the scenery that shapes the story in every act but is never recognized or observed. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-11-1030.mp3 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:27:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-04-700.mp3 Like Seinfeld, Trinity@7 is about nothing. We come here to dawdle in candlelight, be held in the music, and be cradled by verse and prose we might otherwise never read or listen to. We come to dawdle – to do nothing. Most of us, when we enter that door over there, have to spend several minutes, or even more, fighting through our learned resistance to dawdling. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-04-700.mp3 Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:52:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-04-1030.mp3 Jesus’ teaching on divorce is a truth about all of us: we are all connected to one another and we are all connected to the Creation and we cannot be untangled…ever. We are… interdependent…all of us…everyone…Period. When we recognize and stand in the powerlessness of our solitariness, Jesus tells us and the Pharisees… when we recognize that we have no dowry or status or achievements to offer – only then will we finally be open to God. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-10-04-1030.mp3 Tue, 6 Oct 2009 19:05:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-09-27-1030.mp3 So, if you want to believe in Hell as real estate, as an eternal punishment by a vindictive and parsimonious God, go right ahead. But please, if you are going to believe such a thing… at least use images from our own experience; images from Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Cambodia, Rwanda and Sudan. Why stick with an ancient trash dump when we have so many more graphic images, from within our own generations, of how human beings create hell for one another. I for one reject the idea of Hell. I think it is absurd, personally. I can’t make sense of the notion of Hell. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-09-27-1030.mp3 Fri, 2 Oct 2009 19:34:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-09-13-1030.Mp3 You see, a lot of church-people think that what we are doing here is supposed to be about Jesus – or even God. I don’t think so. What we are doing here is supposed to be about us. Jesus and God are more than capable of fending for themselves, and there is nothing that you or I can say or do that will bring us closer to Jesus or God. And what we know about Jesus or God, in any real sense, might just fill a thimble. For those that don’t sew, that’s a very teeny tiny amount. We are humble human beings, or at least sometimes humble. What we get to know about the big, bad mysteries of Life and God and supernatural stuff, is really very small. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-09-13-1030.Mp3 Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:06:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-09-06-1030.Mp3 But look, we all have serious baggage, the dark kind. We all have prejudices rooted in ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, age, nationality, even profession. They are dark spots in otherwise wonderful people that keep us apart. The point is not to be someone without such baggage, no one is without such baggage. The point is to be open to seeing and feeling the baggage we carry, and to be willing to unload it when the opportunity comes. Indeed, we can unload such baggage. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-09-06-1030.Mp3 Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:53:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-08-30-1030.Mp3 The goal of humanly created environments is constant comfort, merciless equilibrium, utter protection from too little warmth or too much heat. Constantly regulated environments that guard us from discomfort, protect us from insects, delight our nostrils with only yummy aromas, calm our fears, wrap us in safety and lull us to…a kind of waking sleep. That is why we like storms, even though they scare us and threaten us, because they wake us up! Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-08-30-1030.Mp3 Fri, 4 Sep 2009 14:52:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-07-05-1030.Mp3 I have said it before and you will hear me say it again and again… No one is here by accident. I do NOT mean “Everything happens for a reason.” In fact I do not believe that everything happens for a reason any more than I believe that wealth and power is a sign of God’s blessing – which is the ever-popular theology of Capitalism. What I mean is, you and I are here to carry on what Ezekiel promised: They shall know there has been a prophet among them. You and I have been chosen, or invited if you prefer, for prophetic witness; and, in order to succeed as prophets we must be nestled, must be nurtured, in the womb of community. That is what this is, by the way. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-07-05-1030.Mp3 Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:26:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-06-28-1030.Mp3 So, when you tell me, for example, that you have seen your long dead uncle in a dream or vision, I won’t think that is weird. I hear stuff like that all the time. I have even had vague experiences of such things myself. But don’t ask me to believe or disbelieve your vision. I will hear it and receive it and accept it as part of you, and help you explore it and discover the meaning of it with you; but don’t ask me to see it as proof of anything… or to use your experience to bolster my own beliefs… or proclaim your experience as an example of how God wants us to vote Republican or believe in the doctrine of the Trinity or support x, y and z. It is your experience not mine. When it is my experience, and I see old weird Uncle Ed, then, then I need to account for it and its meaning. You see what I mean by agnostic? Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-06-28-1030.Mp3 Thu, 2 Jul 2009 18:14:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-06-21-1030.Mp3 Before we get to that place we are desperately rowing, rowing, rowing away from God in the midst of a frightening storm. But the storm, it turns out, is not all around us but utterly within us. Yes, there are dangers. Yes, we may be tossed by a rough sea. Yes, the conditions around us may be threatening. But the storm is within, and when we face the storms that around us with a calm within us, we discover even the humor of our situation. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-06-21-1030.Mp3 Thu, 2 Jul 2009 17:40:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-05-24-1030.Mp3 So next time you are driving down 219 or the 400 and you see a long-legged old crow hopping over to munch on a dead skunk, don’t be thinking “Yuk!” – roll down your window and yell, “Bon a petit!” In the end it doesn’t much matter how it happens, whether it is via a short straw or a decisive act of intention, you and I are sanctified by what we do… or not. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-05-24-1030.Mp3 Tue, 9 Jun 2009 19:21:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-05-17-1030.Mp3 The likelihood is: that while most of us may have met or brushed up against our “Higher Power” once or twice, or have had wee inklings here and there of God’s presence in the world; we were probably not awakened from a bad dream like Scrooge or a born-again gardener in the form of “The Changed Man” poem. Where does that leave us? If we are not in love with god, utterly fixed upon God as the object of our desire the way Scripture so often presumes, or the mystics imagine, where does that leave us? Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-05-17-1030.Mp3 Tue, 9 Jun 2009 18:56:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-05-10-1030.Mp3 You and I, in community with one another, share a quest that requires an energetic and spirited effort – it requires intention and thoughtfulness and downright hard work. And always, it is a shared quest. So much has changed and much is changing in and around us. It has not become simpler but more complex; not easier but more strenuous. That is why baptism is a communal event – one in which we promise to support the one being baptized and his or her family to do what it requires a whole community to do: nurture and challenge and strengthen. Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-05-10-1030.Mp3 Tue, 9 Jun 2009 18:27:00 -0500 Podcasts http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-05-03-1030.Mp3 We do not have to get into the practice of surrender, without a doubt we can lead a fine life without it. But if we want to have a spiritual life, if we want to get deeper, it’s all about surrender. I wonder about this… I wonder about the fact that even though I know that surrender is an abiding truth, why I still resist it so dog-gone much. I wonder about an alternative, even now, I still wonder if there is an alternative to surrender. I know there isn’t, but I still wonder about it. It’s like that joke with the punch line: “Is there anybody else up there?” Cam Miller http://www.trinitybuffalo.org/podcasts/sermons/2009-05-03-1030.Mp3 Fri, 8 May 2009 16:03:01 -0500 Podcasts