Sermons, Messages, and other Writings by the Rev. Erik Christensen
The hour has come for us to lose our illusions and to shed our fear. The moment is upon us to set out into the deep waters, the ways of being and becoming that we have sense are possible but have seemed too difficult. Now it is time to get organized, to fight not only for life on this planet but for the life of the planet itself, its lands and its waters.
Are we able to imagine how love, taking root in our hearts, might change the world? Can we imagine a love that powerful, or more appropriately, a power that loving?
The Giving Tree had a hard time making it to print. Publishers thought it was too sad for kids and too simple for adults. Fifty years later it remains something of an enigma. Some people see in the story a parable about a mother’s self-sacrificing love for her child. Some see a story of narcissistic consumption. Some have called it a story of friendship, others a parable of Christ’s love. One reviewer called it a sado-masochistic fairy tale in which abuse is elevated to a virtue.
By Proclamation 