I’m back from a short series of meetings in Orlando with a mixed multitude: LGBTQ people from various faith traditions, religious scholars, nonprofit leaders, and people committed to reducing, preventing, and intervening in social oppression. This is my tribe, one of them. These are people who give time, resources, attention, and talents to projects and actions […]
We leave no one behind
In the book Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace, Angel Kyodo Williams explores spiritually grounded and grounding ways to live in a world where all is not well. Chapter 3 includes an analysis of the Three Pure Precepts: “to not create evil, to practice good, and to practice good for others.” These […]
The Moral Revival at Riverside
I spent yesterday evening at the Riverside Church, a nondenominational church with great Gothic arches and 80 years of practice supporting Christian social activism. Riverside is the church where in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., declared the war in Vietnam a moral failure. To this day, the church includes portraits of King, and a wing […]
Just do something
International tragedies come to popular consciousness so often now, we know what to expect: a wave of public thoughts and prayers, followed by criticism of those thoughts and prayers, and criticism of the criticism until attention dissipates or there’s another international tragedy to move toward. One of the most pointed critiques of the cycle came […]
Defining “Us”
A few recent headlines on climate and environmental justice: While Shell’s Perdido platform has spilled 90,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and Shell faces a lawsuit on behalf of communities in Nigeria, Exxon’s shareholders have rejected proposals to include a climate change expert on their corporate board or consider how global carbon-reduction agreements would impact the company. Residents […]