How we spend our money is how we vote on what exists in the world. The hundreds of billions of tax dollars wasted annually for war and war preparation is money unavailable for programs of social uplift, especially hunger relief, poverty reduction, affordable housing, education, medical care or meaningful, life-sustaining jobs …
God died on Good Friday. There could be no more chaos in the universe than in those hours between Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. But what the disciples experienced as chaos during those hours—and what we experience as chaos today—God sees differently …
A few years ago I officiated at a wedding. On that December evening, participants in the ceremony, including me, carried these lanterns. The colors of the layers of sand were yellow and blue, the colors worn by the bride and groom. Two people, surrounded by friends and family, joined their lives together that day …
The biblical terms for sacrificial atonement, in both Hebrew and Greek, are understood better as cleansing of sin than payment to God. That sentence is sure to elicit responses—positive and negative—because it bears upon a major controversy among scholars and layfolk alike …
I was in Baghdad during Holy Week of 2004, the week the stupidity of the Iraq war became unavoidably obvious. On Palm Sunday, the day the people of Jerusalem took to the streets to welcome a messiah they did not comprehend any more than we do, thousands of Moqtada al-Sadr’s followers shut down central Baghdad’s streets, protesting the arrest of a top aide and the closing of al-Sadr’s newspaper …
My neighbor is a master gardener and demonstrates her growing skill with more elaborate, more beautiful gardens every year. Before she studied gardening, her backyard was an overgrown, poison ivy-infested hillside sloping down toward the St. Joseph River …
