Have you noticed how beautiful everyone’s lives have become? People’s homes and families, vacations and outings are so artfully photographed and presented they look straight out of Martha Stewart. The trappings of fashion, or dressing up, we see in these photos have always been there. But something is new in how carefully staged we are, [...]
To envision the way “the powers” operate in our lives (see Part One for an explanation of this theological concept), it is useful to consider some concrete scenarios. For example, imagine an energetic, entrepreneurial woman decides she wants to design and make clothing, but in a way that does not exploit workers sewing the clothing, [...]
When I was a college undergraduate, my ethics teacher taught that ethics come down to this: being able to see clearly. We can engage in all sorts of philosophizing, all sorts of ethical calisthenics when we get into a quandary, but when it comes to a situation where we must make a difficult ethical decision, [...]
Last week I proceeded to share on Facebook a link to my blog “Theology of Resistance,” as I do every week or so. As with many writers, Facebook is how I reach my readers—that diverse, wonderful, readerly, thoughtful, far-flung tribe of people with the same quirky interests I have. Thanks to social media, I can [...]
Back when I was young, full of spit and fury, I relished the New Testament book of James. It is so didactic and ethical and uncompromising, and I loved it the way I might have loved an Occupy Wall Street speech. Still today, there is much I find engaging in James’ appeal to economic justice, [...]
Among global literature, few narratives are as a baldly subversive and anti-imperial as the Christmas stories, while at the same time so neutralized. The gospel writers of Matthew and Luke (the only canonical gospels with birth narratives) each in their own unique way set up a stark confrontation between Jesus and the Roman Caesars, [...]
I have conflicted feelings about effort. As a young adult, effort was my mantra. And effort, coupled with an adolescent zest to save the world, was perilous. In my early 20s, I stumbled my way through so many “good deeds,” it is painful to look back. The [...]
Economists be damned, the GOP tax plan constructed on the debunked scaffolding of trickle-down economics, keeps plodding forward. We are to believe that giving a massive tax cut to corporations and business owners will put needed cash in the pockets of poor and middle-class families because the corporations will uncharacteristically choose to invest their [...]
As I often do, I turned for inspiration for this essay to the lectionary readings of the day. Among them: two vengeance Psalms, a grisly murder narrative from Esther, and a fire-and-brimstone ditty from the Gospel of Matthew, with its characteristic presaging of weeping and the oddly outmoded gnashing of teeth. Among them, not one [...]
“The purpose of life is to be continually defeated by ever greater things.” ~Rainier Maria Rilke Fall arrives and my walk takes me past Foley Creek, the stream quickened after a week of heavy rain. The loud splash of a salmon stops me in my tracks. At several points around my neighborhood, roadway meets creek, but at this [...]
In the intriguing book Sapiens, Yuval Harari makes the case that homo sapiens dominated all other species and left behind other early-humans because we were able to pass on shared mythologies, or sacred stories. Prior to the ability to build group cohesion in this way, through shared concepts and values, groups tended to reach a [...]
Lately I’ve stumbled upon articles, books, and interviews about the origin of belief, about why we believe what we believe. It seems to be a conversation in the air these days at a time marked by denial of human-caused climate-change, or the apparently widespread belief that mass shootings have nothing to do with gun access. Many [...]
In American culture, success is defined by money. Now can we just agree that the success = money paradigm has serious flaws? For have you noticed that the most financially successful people are often lacking the traits that create great human beings? Take just one list of such traits from the Christian tradition: love, joy, peace, patience, [...]
Throughout his ministry, Jesus challenged every boundary people used to define and separate themselves—ethnic boundaries, geographical boundaries, purity boundaries, moral-legal boundaries, relational boundaries, boundaries between humans and animals, adults and children, men and women. Jesus didn’t stop at material boundaries, but went on to demonstrate with his life that everything is spiritual—there is no [...]
This week much has rightfully been said about gun control and the NRA, and much energy expended in the debate. It is natural in times of tragedy to want to funnel grief into constructive actions. In fact, it may be an important way to survive collective trauma. Researchers find that people who respond to calamities [...]
Mark 11:20-25. In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!" “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ [...]
The Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale,” based on the novel by Margaret Atwood, takes place in a dystopian United States where the vast majority of inhabitants can no longer have children. In response to this crisis, an authoritarian governmental structure allows those in power to subjugate fertile women, forcing them to work as “handmaids” (sex/birth [...]
Chaos makes people anxious. In fact, some people deliberately foment chaos because chaos also creates compliance. The person who created the chaos can offer to put an end to it, and thus to the anxiety, if only the subordinate will fall in line and comply with the chaos-maker’s program. Usually this works only temporarily, [...]
I sit with Brother Martin Gonzales, over sixty years a monk and reflecting on the nearness of life’s end. We are at Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey on a summer day when the perfume of magnolias stretches across the way and birds sing, as he reiterates words he likes to share: “I don’t care [...]
I sit to write about divorce and feel the twist of it in my belly, the prolonged smoldering. For after two and a half years of fighting to get back my marriage—like I’ve fought for nothing else in my life, I acknowledge it was never mine to keep. On the nearly deafening day two and [...]
“In the new humanity which is begotten today, the Word prolongs the unending act of [his/her] own birth.” ~ Pierre Tielhard de Chardin As Christians, we uphold a fully en-fleshed theological worldview. This is not just because incarnation of the Divine is a key part of our spiritual imagination (and by incarnation, I mean divinity [...]
“Sometimes the best map will not guide you; You can't see what's round the bend. Sometimes the road leads through dark places; Sometimes the darkness is your friend.” ~ Bruce Cockburn You could say I am fond of animals; I have loved many as pets and close companions. But never have I loved an animal [...]
Acts 17:26-28 …[Paul:] “God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’” [...]
“…The mystery of life in its totality is incomprehensible, and what can be understood often speaks in a language so slow that we seldom stick around long enough to hear it.” —Mark Nepo As Mark Nepo states so beautifully, what can be understood of life’s mystery is revealed so quietly, so unexpectedly, we must slow [...]
Matthew 12:41-42: “The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here. 42 The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the [...]