Last preached on July 21, 2013 Next month, while on vacation from the church, I will be serving the “2-weeks per year” that I owe to the United States Army as a Reserve military chaplain. Luckily this year I will not be going out to the field for those … Read more →
Category Archives: Pastoral Care
The Transition of Ordination
It has now been over 2 years since I was ordained as a Unitarian Universalist Minister, and each of those years I have spent in more than full time ministry as a minister in our congregations, as well as a reserve military chaplain. Prior to that was a little over … Read more →
Foundations of Grief and Loss — Sermon by the Rev. David Pyle
Last preached on November 27th, 2011 Reading From Letters, by Emily Dickinson What shall we do, my darling, when trial grows more, and more, when the dim, lone light expires, and it’s dark, so very dark, and we wander, and know not where, and cannot get out of the … Read more →
The Role of Faith for the Military Chaplain
In the fall of 2011 I was honored to attend the first ever OutServe Leadership Conference. This was the first time for this organization of LGB persons actively serving in the military to gather publicly, since such public gatherings and recognition was made possible by the repeal of Don’t Ask, … Read more →
The Fluidity of Identity and the Created Self
There are many amazing aspects about the process of meeting a new church. Of course there are the challenges of moving into a system that is already well established, of becoming subject to traditions and power-lines that are long established, and to engage congregational dynamics as they flow and shift. … Read more →
The Honor of Being on “Smiley and West”
This weekend I will be on a short segment of the Public Radio International program “Smiley and West” with Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West. It was recorded today, to be aired this weekend. It was an honor to have a letter I sent to the program selected for the … Read more →
Dawn Breaks on “Offer Day”
It is an interesting part of being an Interim Minister, that you come to love a congregation, that you have ministered among them, that you have hopes and dreams for them, that you are an intimate part of a religious community… and you know that you are only there to … Read more →
To Love but not Befriend
I don’t know if there is another human relationship like that a minister needs to build with their congregants. Or even the relationship a minister needs to build with the congregation as a whole. As I have been building my relationship with the members of the congregation in Midland Michigan, … Read more →
Inoculation Through Creating Common Wisdom Narratives
I am fascinated with how we human beings create narratives or stories, and then derive our meanings from them. In politics, this manifests in several different ways, one of the most obvious being how a “narrative” is created by any successful candidacy for high political office (Obama the Reformer, McCain … Read more →
Emotion, Reason, and Pastoral Care
I want to posit a few aspects of my theory of the primacy of human emotion. The purpose for this article is that I am currently developing, as a part of my Clinical Pastoral Education Residency, both a theory and theology of Pastoral Care. I am well aware that this … Read more →