Left: A new concept with legs. Right: A brain with bug eyes and gaping mouth waving a sword in each hand. Speech bubble: “Have no fear. I will kill it with swords!” If you’ve ever scribbled a rough denial in the margin of a book that challenged your core beliefs, you’ve experienced some of the […]
A message I didn’t expect
An unexpected message from an unexpected source: Pope Francis tele-presented at this year’s TED conference on the topic of inclusion and social responsibility and used the parable of the Good Samaritan to underscore his points. The more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to […]
The consequences of belief
Last fall, I learned from Professor Jean Sheldon about why it’s important to be choosy about one’s ideals, mentors, models, and gods. “The picture I have of God today,” Sheldon wrote, “is the photograph others will take of me tomorrow.” People may well rise to the level of their gods. We only rise higher or stretch further when extremely […]
Trace your training
During my presentation at CityLights today, members shared some of their experiences working under the order of Pharaoh: the insatiable, grasping, perfectionist, reductive, and never-satisfied energy of imperialism. Sometimes, I said, it’s not that we’re working for Pharaoh; it’s that we’ve become so accustomed the culture of Pharaoh that we enact its ideology on others […]
From where we stand
Congregations across the US will sing the song “In Christ Alone” this weekend, just as mine did this morning. It’s an obvious choice for Easter weekend because its verses trace the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. A line midway through the song recently became a flashpoint for the last ten centuries of debate among […]
Hope and realism
The white race in America will not admit the Negro to equal rights if it is not forced to do so.” —Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 1932, via James Cone Niebuhr wrote wrote this statement 25-30 years before the height of the civil rights movement. It suggests a clarity about US race relations […]