The ten sermons contained in this volume take up the challenge of honoring both mind and heart; recognizing that our minds and our hearts are inextricably entwined, that we are made of both. They do this while also recognizing that traditional religion is in trouble-resurgent fundamentalism notwithstanding-and that much of it fails to address the realities of where we live intellectually and emotionally. Here are sermons that do not gloss the hard questions that arise from hard experience; that recognize God is to be sensed, often most crucially, in the midst of difficulty; that God is ultimately a mystery we may not grasp, but rather a mystery that grasps us. Phillip S. Washburn, a minister in the United Church of Christ, is a graduate of Dickinson College and Duke Divinity School and the author of several librettos for musical dramas for performance in worship. He has served churches in Dumfries, Scotland; Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Hamden, Connecticut; and lastly, for twenty-four years as Senior Minister at the Scarsdale Congregational Church, in Scarsdale, New York. Retired as of June, 2007, he currently resides in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.