I once spoke with a highly educated physicist who was a psychiatric patient. We call her Annie. She talked to me about the Newtonian misconception of gravity as a force, when it really has more to do with the bending of spacetime. We consider the biblical story of the invasion of Canaan, and the evidence to counter and to defend the validity of this story. We then get back to the bending of spacetime - and we see that there is something very deep we can learn about advancing our faith.

I once saw John Wayne in a fancy mens store. I was a boy, and was with an older volunteer who was buying clothing for a kid whose family had no assets. We look at her bold behavior. We consider several passages from the Bible that all tell us how we should behave when living out our faith. We see that this volunteer, this older woman, truly followed the instructions of God as she approached John Wayne.

A very successful man who was in the hospital in great pain reminded me of an important Bible passage about humility: the apparent Creed that we think Paul inserted into his letter to the believers at Philippi. We consider Creeds in general, like the Apostles and the Nicene, and then look at this beautiful, rhythmic passage of Paul's. We then consider why Paul's poem might be a much better Christian Creed for today.

Years ago, when I had an as-yet untreated corneal disease, I had very limited vision. I once accidentally stepped into a coffee cart line in a hospital lobby, and without meaning to, cut off a number of people. I got yelled at loudly - and felt both angry and embarrassed when the woman who yelled at me didn't seem to care that I couldn't see well. We look at a few quotes, from Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and Ecclesiastes, that have to do with how we treat others, how God looks after us, and our duty to take care of other people - and to see things from their perspective. There was another, very real reason why I had no business being unhappy with this woman.

When I was a boy, the cross on the top of my church was covered with gold leaf. We consider the First Temple, Solomon's Temple, which King David declared "will not be for man". We consider an amazing vision of the Prophet Ezekiel: a valley of dried and disconnected bones rising up and reforming the lost people of God. We consider the result of the gold leaf being put on the cross of my childhood church by a person who was honoring himself and not God - and the greater issue of God speaking to us, sometimes very dramatically and sometimes very quietly.

My wife and I once saw a side-dump trunk tip over and completely bury and crush a car - with a man still inside. It seemed like the perfect example showing that we can die at any time. We look at the Lord's Prayer, its text from the Gospels, what it really meant (as opposed to what we might think it means), and we consider how it relates to us today. We look at the Lord's Prayer as the perfect prayer to offer at any time we are in need - and to offer every single day.

When I was a boy we used to look for particularly salacious or gross stories in the Bible and talk about them on the playground at recess. My favorite one is the bread that God orders Ezekiel to bake - by cooking it over human poo. We look at the Old Testament purity laws and what they were really meant to inspire in the People of God. We look at what they mean for us today. We consider how we can be "pure" in the eyes of God - in a spiritual sense.

I once spoke with a young woman who had been badly traumatized in life. She understandably had a jaded feeling about the ability of Christianity to change humanity. We look at two similar stories in the Gospels, about the "Second Coming", or the "Parousia" in Greek. We look at this from the perspective of a spiritual, not a physical, second coming - and what this could mean for those of us who still believe that people could transform this world before Jesus comes again.