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 …
Of Patriots and Matriots
For us Northern Hemisphere folks who follow the Greco-Latinate calendar, this is a time of endings and new beginnings, of passage into darkness and out into light, from the dying …
Reconciling Conversations
Readers of this blog will know that I have spent many years cultivating a form of worship that places the circle of reconciling conversation at the center. This Roundtable Worship, …
Mothers Day Reverberations
Mother’s Day didn’t arise as a Hallmark card sentiment but has an earlier expression in an impassioned plea from Julia Ward Howe to unite women around the world in the …
Desert Reflections
The electronic world makes it easy to forget the real world expanses of this planet. We just completed a 2400-mile road trip from the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina to …
Who’s Your Imbongi?
I have long been interested in the South African tradition of the imbongi. The figure of this classic Xhosa “praise singer” accompanied my thoughts as Nelson Mandela returned to his …
Kings, Messiahs, and Mandela
After a couple of weeks devoted to moving my website to a new host, I am finally able to reflect with you on two events – one perennial and one …
Rights and Relationships
Political arguments in America are being strangled by our preoccupation with rights to the exclusion of relationships as the focus of our ethics. Whether in arguments over abortion, gun violence, …