The Current Spiritual Community

10/06/2026

Eight hundred years after his death, St. Francis is mostly remembered as a garden statue with a bird on his shoulder. But in 1219, in the middle of the Fifth Crusade, he crossed the battle lines in Egypt to talk with the Sultan his own church was trying to conquer. Meanwhile, the cardinal leading the crusade turned down the Sultan's offer of peace.

Pastor Michael follows that story to Birmingham in 1963, where eight Alabama clergy called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s work "unwise and untimely," and King answered from a jail cell. You'll hear him read part of that answer in his own voice.

How can we know when breaking with our own tradition might be the most faithful thing we can do? Tell us in the comments.

🌈 The Current is a progressive, online spiritual community where doubt is welcome and love is the whole point. Join us LIVE every Sunday at 10:15 for God Connect, a progressive conversation for people deconstructing inherited religion. Here we rediscover the radical Jesus and learn to trust the tug of the universe already calling us from within. No dogma. Just honest people exploring the intersection of ancient wisdom and the world we actually live in.

Email [email protected] for more information.

Eight hundred years after his death, St. Francis is mostly remember...

10/05/2026

Most of us picture St. Francis as a stone statue in a garden, with a bird on his shoulder. Eight hundred years after his death, that's mostly how the Church remembers him.

But in 1219, in the middle of a crusade, Francis crossed the battle lines in Egypt. The Sultan's guards beat him, and then he spent several days talking with the Sultan his own church was trying to conquer. Meanwhile, the cardinal in charge of the crusade turned down the Sultan's offer of peace.

More than seven centuries later, eight Alabama clergy called Martin Luther King Jr.'s work "unwise and untimely."

This week we explore what happens when faith MUST disobey the religion that tries to bind it. How can we know when breaking with our own tradition might be the most faithful thing we can do? I'd love to hear what you think.

Why it is never “unwise and untimely” to do the right thing

09/22/2026

In 1529, an exiled translator working by candlelight needed an English word for what happens when two estranged people are made whole again. So William Tyndale built one: at-one-ment.

Ask most Christians today what atonement means and you'll hear about a debt Jesus had to pay. Somewhere between his teaching and the chair you're sitting in, the word picked up a price tag he wouldn't recognize.

On the eve of Yom Kippur, we traced the word back to its source: Leviticus 16, the two goats, the scapegoat nobody punished, and a story Jesus told about a son who never finished his repayment speech.

There is no debt to repay, just love to rediscover.

In this message: how William Tyndale coined "atonement," "scapegoat," and "mercy seat" while translating the first English Bible; what the Day of Atonement ritual in Leviticus 16 actually does; how the letter to the Hebrews, Anselm's Cur Deus Homo, and Reformation penal substitution moved the word from reunion to repayment; and what Mishnah Yoma 8:9 says about the repair only you can make.

Question for discussion: Somebody is waiting on a repair only you can make. What makes that difficult? Leave a comment below.

🌈 The Current is a progressive, online spiritual community where doubt is welcome and love is the whole point. Join us LIVE every Sunday at 10:15 for God Connect, a progressive conversation for people deconstructing inherited religion. Here we rediscover the radical Jesus and learn to trust the tug of the universe already calling us from within. No dogma. Just honest people exploring the intersection of ancient wisdom and the world we actually live in.

Email [email protected] for more information.

Tyndale invented the word "atonement" in 1529. It meant reunion. Fi...

09/21/2026

In 1529, an exiled translator working by candlelight needed an English word for what happens when two estranged people are made whole again. So William Tyndale built one: at-one-ment.

Five hundred years later, ask most Christians what atonement means and you'll hear about a debt Jesus had to pay. Somewhere between his teaching and the chair you're sitting in, the word picked up a price tag he wouldn't recognize.

On the eve of Yom Kippur, we traced the word back to its source: Leviticus 16, two goats, and a story Jesus told about a son who never finished his repayment speech.

There is no debt to repay, just love to rediscover.

How atonement went from reconciliation to repayment

09/15/2026

My great-grandparents were Orthodox Jews and Catholics. My parents were mostly just "American." I'm something else entirely. What happens to a tradition between generations?

This week we look at how Buddhist monks and the earliest followers of Jesus each tried to keep a memory intact across centuries and how both, in very different ways, still lost the main thread. We examine what that means for the faith and religion we inherit, what we're doing with it, and what "remembering correctly" might actually require.

🌈 The Current is a progressive, online spiritual community where doubt is welcome and love is the whole point. Join us LIVE every Sunday at 10:15 for God Connect, a progressive conversation for people deconstructing inherited religion. Here we rediscover the radical Jesus and learn to trust the tug of the universe already calling us from within. No dogma. Just honest people exploring the intersection of ancient wisdom and the world we actually live in.

Email [email protected] for more information.

My great-grandparents were Orthodox Jews and Catholics. My parents ...

09/14/2026

My great-grandparents were Orthodox Jews on my mom's side, Catholics on my dad's. My grandparents identified a little less as Jewish or Catholic, but still primarily saw themselves within that religious world. My parents saw themselves as "Americans" first — less Jewish or Catholic than their parents. And I've taken what I learned from both religions, added a healthy helping of historical context and a dash of science and physics, to develop something that works for the postmodern spiritual sojourner.

That's not unique to my family. It happens to every story, every tradition, every faith, generation after generation — whether anyone's intentionally trying to disinherit something or not.

This week I compare how Buddhist monks and the earliest Jesus communities tried — and both, in their own ways, failed — to keep a memory intact, and what that means for how we interpret what we've been handed down.

Thanks for the memories? Read the essay:

https://medium.com/pastor-michaels-intersect/thanks-for-the-memories-50c6bc7efcef

09/01/2026

Sound waves shaped the universe. Literally.

Before there were atoms, the universe was ringing — a real, physical sound, frozen into the structure of every galaxy you've ever looked at. This week, we trace that sound from the birth of the cosmos to a swimming pool, and land on an uncomfortable question: Why can't we hear each other anymore?

Along the way, we'll discuss what "recombination" actually means (the name is a lie), why sight lets us stay separate but sound never does, and what physics calls an impedance mismatch as the reason two people standing three feet apart can be functionally unreachable.

🔊 The audio of the early universe used in this message was created by physicist John G. Cramer, University of Washington. (c) John G. Cramer - 2013. More at his site: https://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/BBSound_2013.html

🌈 The Current is a progressive, online spiritual community where doubt is welcome and love is the whole point. Join us LIVE every Sunday at 10:15 for God Connect, a progressive conversation for people deconstructing inherited religion. Here we rediscover the radical Jesus and learn to trust the tug of the universe already calling us from within. No dogma. Just honest people exploring the intersection of ancient wisdom and the world we actually live in.

Email [email protected] for more information.

https://youtu.be/f0uxlT-LmIs

Sound waves shaped the universe. Literally.Before there were atom...

08/31/2026

Sound waves shaped the universe.

In the beginning, the universe was hot enough that atoms couldn’t hold together. Every electron that tried to settle into orbit around a proton got immediately knocked loose again by the sheer energy of cosmic birth.

Imagine a primordial fog of free, charged protons and electrons, with photons — light — constantly bouncing around and colliding with those loose electrons. But the light can only travel a short distance before it hits an electron, scatters, and hits another one. The primordial fog is light itself, trapped in a cosmic hall of mirrors and unable to travel in a straight line.

In the fog, light and matter aren’t separate substances. They’re stuck to each other, colliding constantly, moving as one thing, like two people trying to get off a crowded subway car at Manhattan’s Penn Station at five in the afternoon.

Eventually, a dense spot pulls matter toward itself, but all that trapped light is pushing outward, trying to escape, so the dense spot gets compressed until the light pressure shoves it open again. Then gravity pushes it back in. In, out, in, out, rolling through the whole of everything at more than half the speed of light.

Daniel Eisenstein, who has spent a career measuring the beginning of the beginning, says the early universe “rings.” Before there were atoms, before light could freely travel, the stuff we’re made of was ringing like the bells at Notre Dame on Easter Sunday.¹

Read more on Medium. No paywall.

Why we can’t hear each other

08/25/2026

Five hundred years before Paul wrote to the church in Rome, the working people of the city walked off the job. The Senate sent a man to talk them down, and he did so not with an offer, but a story.

It worked. They went home.

Paul knew that story. Everyone in Rome did. And in Romans 12 Paul picks up the Empire's favorite metaphor and adds two words that turn it on its side.

This week we look at what Paul actually wrote — not the version we've been handed — and at two Greek words that change the whole passage.

We are neither separate nor the same. What does that free you from?

🌈 The Current is a progressive, online spiritual community where doubt is welcome and love is the whole point. Join us LIVE every Sunday at 10:15 for God Connect, a progressive conversation for people deconstructing inherited religion. Here we rediscover the radical Jesus and learn to trust the tug of the universe already calling us from within. No dogma. Just honest people exploring the intersection of ancient wisdom and the world we actually live in.

Email [email protected] for more information.

Five hundred years before Paul wrote to the church in Rome, the wor...

08/24/2026

I'm not sure how anyone can interpret Paul's letter to his church in Rome without knowing the story of Menenius Agrippa and the historic Roman general strike. Because what Paul does in Romans 12 brilliantly transforms the Empire's perverse notion of what a body is. And reminds us that we are part of each other.

Entangled, Not Conformed