Do you know the name Matthew Fox? He’s a former Roman Catholic priest who was kicked of the church because of his expansive spirituality. Almost fifty years ago he embraced feminist theology, calling God “Mother,” and instead of original sin he talked about original blessing.

Years ago I read an essay about Fox and the creative ways he was practicing his spirituality, and I still remember what he said to an interviewer as he came out of Native American sweat lodge. Asked is there was a lesson that he’d learned there in the heat,  Matthew Fox smiled and said, “More joy.” 

Back when I was a teenager, we got an assistant minister at our church. He was young, free-spirited, kind of radical, at least for us in those days. Everyone loved him. Before preaching, he’d say this prayer: “God grant us the courage to seek the truth, come when it may, cost what it will.”

“Holy mother, life bestowing, bid our was and warfare cease.
Fill us all with grace o’er flowing. Teach us how to live in peace.”

This Easter, and every Easter I suppose, I feel this tug between the churchy, theological Easter with its story of the empty tomb and its promise of resurrection, and the earthy, natural Easter that celebrates the coming of spring, and our earth awakening again. Which is also a resurrection story, isn’t it?

I first came here a little over 11 years ago, in the late winter of  2013.  My wife and I had bought our home nearby in Haverhill a few months prior, and by the time we had fully moved and settled in, I was completely sick of thinking about material things.  

Though I had not regularly attended a church in decades, I was looking to kindle my spiritual life again.

It’s Palm Sunday, the day in the Christian tradition that remembers the symbolic story of Jesus coming into Jerusalem with his followers to celebrate the festival of freedom called Passover. It’s the start of Holy Week, when Christians remember Jesus getting into trouble with the authorities, then betrayed by his friend, being arrested and killed. 

My wife Jessica and I both grew up around here. We knew each other briefly in high school in the mid-90’s, neither was impressed with the other, then moved away and lived our separate lives. Years later in 2004 we met up again, this time we decided the other was actually pretty cool, and got married. And by the time Jess and I moved to Haverhill in 2008 we were ready to have kids. We decided we wanted to give our kids some kind of church experience. We talked about religion and church and what our upbringings were like. Neither of our childhoods were particularly religious. We’d both been through first communion and confirmation, so I guess…Catholic? But it was something that, as prospective parents, we decided was important. Our reasoning went thusly: if we introduce them to religion at a young age, then later on they’ll be less likely to join a cult. Better they learn it from us, than on the streets. She had settled on a belief in a higher spiritual power, and I had recently discovered I was an atheist. So the search began and the bar was low. During that time, about a year later, we learned one of us was pregnant. Then we learned it was twins. 

In these weeks when our worship theme  is “Images of the Divine,” some of you have been sharing with me your ideas and images and experiences of this mystery that we do catch glimpses of from time to time. We’ve been having conversations about how we apprehend the presence that some of us call God, and how fleeting these experiences can be, and how hard it can be to talk about them. But that’s why we’re here—to point toward the good and the true, to open ourselves up to these holy mysteries.

Recently I was going through a box of old things and found a small notebook labeled “backpacking log”, a day-to-day description of a weeklong 80-mile hike that Hal and I took together on the Appalachian Trail in northeastern Pennsylvania. Reading those pages brought back a visceral memory of each day’s adventure through a very rocky stretch of trail, the blisters, the weight of the packs, the mice that ate our granola. Some days were harder than others, but we arrived at our final destination, the Delaware Water Gap, a beautiful vista along the river.  As anyone who has backpacked knows, there are always mishaps and struggles that happen when you are carrying your shelter, food, water and clothing on your backs and in those days, there were no cellphones, so we were off the grid from our family and friends until midweek when we found a payphone at a tavern and could call home and tell everyone we were still in one piece. By the time we reached the end of our trail, we were dirty, weary but happy we had successfully completed the hike.  Ready to be picked up by family, I wrote my last passage in the journal, ending with the words, “Thank you God.” 

I came to this church like many of us did for the first time.  Children in tow, a little (or a lot) frazzled. A little (or a lot) hesitant to talk to anyone, and a little (or a lot) afraid I would not have anything to give.  That I did not have enough.

Good morning, My name is Sonia Hadley and I have been attending this church fairly regularly for almost a year. 

I believe that any strong healthy relationship has both give and take.  When thinking about why this “give and take” works for me, at this particular church, a long list came to mind.  

For those of you old enough to remember David Letterman’s Late Night Top Ten lists,  I put my list into his format, the only difference you should be aware of is that David Letterman’s top ten lists were funny and mine -not so much.  Here we go.