Climate Change and the Work of Peace
The day after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, we gathered at Lake Junaluska for our seventh annual Interfaith Peace Conference. Our theme this year was “The …
How Many More?
How many children more must we sacrifice to Great God Gun? How many more must die to feed the greed of Smith and Wesson, Remington, and …
Aging in our Communities
Last week I had a public conversation about aging at our local library with Dr. Michael Pass, a local physician who has helped establish a very fine hospice program and …
Republican DTs
Like you, I have watched in shocked disgust the ascendancy of one we shall call DT in the Republican Party’s primary elections. For some this means delirium tremens. You know …
HB2, Bathrooms, and Politics
Some projects emerge out of long-desired purposes. For instance, I am now in the throes of creating as complete a catalog of Sylvia’s artistic work as I can. It spans …
Trumpism and the Struggle for (Re)Public(an) Life
Like most Americans and many of you in other countries, I have been trying to put together my own understanding and response to the rise of a vicious demagogue to …
My Life with Words, Images, and Acts
Words, images, acts. They constitute the three-legged stool of my life. This is a matter of not only where I sit but of how I express myself in the world, …
Identity and Conversation
Let’s see now. L G B….T…Q?… I?? I. I’ve been thinking a lot in the past few years about the alphabet of identities. If we haven’t been struggling to articulate …
The Gift of Mother Emanuel
Last week Sylvia and I went on a long-planned visit to Charleston, South Carolina, a beautiful and historic city we had not seen in twenty-five years. Founded in 1680, its …
The Great Migration
Like the rest of you I have been trying to get my mind and heart around the explosive migration of refugees from war, political collapse, and drought that has engulfed …
Mortality, Autonomy, and Craft
I have been reading two books lately about two very different topics that engage the same basic question: How can we act as genuine individuals in a society that treats …
Forgiveness
I can’t get it out of my mind and I don’t want to. On June 19, Dylan Roof, the confessed killer of nine people in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal …
Persons with Dignity
As the Supreme Court wound through oral arguments about same-sex marriage this past Tuesday (Obergefell v. Hodges), I was struck by the way debates over what it is to be …
Searching for Identity on Cyprus
We returned almost a month ago from two weeks on Cyprus after a rich tour of Egypt’s ancient sites. As we flew over the Mediterranean from Cairo to Larnaca, Cyprus, …
Memories in Egypt
People my age are acutely aware of their memories and the work of memory. It starts with our own effort to figure out what all these pictures are that were …
Violence, Speech, and Religion
Like you, I have been trying to comprehend the murders of the staff of Charlie Hebdo, of innocent shoppers in Paris, and of two thousand people in Nigeria—all at the …