The Refugees’ Table

November 18, 2015 By Nancy Rockwell

They came as indentured servants, short-term slaves. For eight years, all the Pilgrims produced would belong to Squire Weston, the owner of the Mayflower. The houses they built and the land they claimed, the timber they logged and the ships they filled with saleable goods, all were Weston’s. Eager for New World riches, and suspicious of the Pilgrims’ religion, Weston added an equal number to the Pilgrims, people who were Church of England. The Pilgrims discovered the others aboard ship.... Read more

What Is Truth?

November 15, 2015 By Nancy Rockwell

Friends and Readers: This week begins the appearance of my posts on Patheos, which Wikipedia describes as the premier online destination for global dialogue on religion. “Patheos is the largest English language religion and spirituality site in the world, while the Catholic, Progressive Christian, atheist, and pagan Channels constitute the largest web presence for their respective traditions.” I am thrilled to be participating! And I have my fingers crossed for a seamless transition. Please do comment about any problems you find in... Read more

Wars and Rumors of Wars

November 9, 2015 By Nancy Rockwell

Friends and Readers: It’s a great joy to share the news that I am now a contributing blogger for Patheos. The differences in format you will be seeing over the next weeks are part of moving onto the Patheos platform. I will still be linked on Textweek. If you are a subscriber, you will still get notices of new posts. Your comments about all this, as well as each post, are very welcome. As always, thanks for reading! Nancy ______________________________________________________________ ... Read more

Spotlight on Pious Frauds

October 31, 2015 By Nancy Rockwell

Spotlight, a film about the Herculean effort it took to get past the pious defenses of the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston and reveal the story of pedophilic abuse, by priests, of parish children, opens this week. Boston was not the only place abuse was happening, it was just the first place where a group of people, four journalists, an editor, and a lawyer, dedicated themselves to pursuing and publishing the truth. We are all flawed. Practicing piety in public, like... Read more

Open Source

October 26, 2015 By Nancy Rockwell

God is one. Love God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. –Jesus, according to Mark. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who created the World Wide Web, spoke on a TED talk on NPR about Open Sourcing, the freedom from copyright, royalties, and all intellectual property rights into which Berners-Lee has dedicated the Web. Open Source makes available to the world all the codes and design language used in the Web project. The principle... Read more

Seeing in this World

October 18, 2015 By Nancy Rockwell

At the main gate into Jericho, where the crowds gathered in expectation of the great deeds of Jesus, the blind man Bartimaeus sat in his customary place, begging cup in hand. He wasn’t born there. He’d been assigned to that spot by the powers that be, or perhaps by public concensus. In their eyes, that was where he belonged, a helpless young man who had to depend on charity. Jesus changed all that – despite the protests of those who... Read more

The Fire This Time

October 11, 2015 By Nancy Rockwell

A week ago, at the New Yorker (magazine) Festival, I went to a panel discussion about race in our time. It was held in a make-shift hall that is normally a car show room. The cars were parked outside on the street, and the showroom was full of folding chairs and a portable stage. On the stage were: Jelani Cobb, staff writer for the New Yorker, and his guests: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Sr. Editor of The Atlantic magazine and author of... Read more

Kim Davis and the Quest for Eternal Life

October 3, 2015 By Nancy Rockwell

Once, according to Mark, a man ran up to Jesus in the road and begged: Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus began by objecting to the name, Good. Or at least, by trying to figure out what the fellow meant. Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone, exclaimed Jesus. And most of us check the We are all miserable sinners box, as an explanation. As it turns out,... Read more

Divorce

September 27, 2015 By Nancy Rockwell

Those whom God hath joined together, let no one put asunder. The words are resonant. I’ve often told brides and grooms their love is blessed by the aura of memories welling up in the hearts of all those gathered to witness their wedding, knowing that for them, as for me, those memories include all the marriages in which we have been embraced. Yet, in America, statistics show that the median length for a marriage is 11 years, with 90% of all... Read more

Casting Out Demons

September 22, 2015 By Nancy Rockwell

Pope Francis is coming. He’s using Cuba as his entry door. Cuba. For most of the past 50 years, America has considered Cuba to be a demon-led land. Travel has been forbidden, not that people don’t go, but they’ve had to go somewhere else first: say, to El Salvador; and then on to Cuba. All that is changing, and the Pope has been part of this change, and his direct flight to DC from Cuba is historic in more than... Read more