Who are the people in your life, or authors, thinkers, ministers, gurus, yogis or even celebrities that have been spiritual mentors for you? Why? How have they shaped you?

Human beings create things. That’s what we do.

Belden Lane, who studies and writes about spiritual landscapes, says: “The sacred place becomes the point at which the wondrous power of the divine could be seen breaking into the world’s alleged ordinariness.”

Christians are totally free in that they are justified by God’s grace. But in response to that grace we are called to love and serve our neighbors as Christ did for us. For Luther, our freedoms are tempered, and they are tempered by service to our neighbor.

“Sometimes resurrection is like making love. Sometimes it looks like good food with good friends telling stories on themselves. Sometimes it looks like a therapist’s office and a box of tissues and learning to tell the truth. Sometimes it looks like church and sometimes it looks like the wilderness.” - Sarah Bessey

How would you answer that question? Who is God for you? A character? Love? Goodness? The Almighty? The Creator? A thing, a person or persons, a mystery?

Religious identity can be a tricky thing. And its a timely question as people (maybe you!) don't identify with religious traditions and institutions in the same ways as they once did.

Are these part of a “war on Christmas” as some have said, or a needed correction as we live in an increasingly pluralistic, religiously diverse world? Must we depend on corporations like Starbucks to prop up our Christmas observances, or is that the work of the church and individual Christians?

“Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.” - Anne Lamott

"I have come to realize that all the saints I’ve known have been accidental ones—people who inadvertently stumbled into redemption like they were looking for something else at the time.” - Nadia Bolz-Weber

What is it about Francis that fascinates, inspires, or perhaps repels you? Does he cast the Catholic church, and the larger church in a new light? What is our responsibility to the poor? What has he said or done on his visit to the U.S. that speaks to you?

“Forgiveness is also a form of freedom — a refusal to be ruled by anger or resentment. It is like laying a burden down.”

Let's talk about what we can do together to be sure the deaths of the Emanuel Nine are not in vain.

"Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." - Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Bodies matter. Our bodies are an integral part of our spiritual lives.

What are the challenges you experience of living out your faith today? What are the gifts? What are the tensions you experience between Christianity and culture? How do you negotiate them?

How do we remain, faithful members of a religious tradition, while still being honest enough to critique it?

The promise of Christmas is that God comes to us in our joy, in our sorrow, in the fullness and complexity of our humanity in the birth of Jesus in a lowly manger in Bethlehem.

As we draw closer to Thanksgiving, thoughts invariably turn to giving thanks for the many gifts in our lives.

What happens when a pub “becomes sacred in a more accessible everyday way, and the dualism between sacred and profane whether we are thinking in those terms or not sort of dissipates, and we see that unity and sacredness of all of life and if I can have a conversation with a stranger…we can have this human engagement and I can hear their story and I can see their authenticity in it and I can see God in it. And that’s a holy, sacred moment.”