Partying in the Rose Garden as Healthcare for the Poor Dies It’s twenty four hours since the news broke, that the Republicans had voted to replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) with a new act, the ACHA, that promises to save more than 900 billion dollars over ten years by knocking a minimum of 14 million people out of the healthcare system in the first year, and knocking a lot of previously covered care off everyone’s plan . A number... Read more

A Look at City of Ghosts and John 10 On Thursday, in New York City, at the Tribeca Film Festival, I saw a new documentary about Syria, City of Ghosts. It tells the story of citizen journalists of Raqqa, a city taken over by ISIS, where hell has been the order of the day for over a year. These citizen journalists were college students when Syria dissolved into civil war a decade ago. One of their journalism professors urged them... Read more

It’s a well-worn story, the day-long walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, hours of plodding along on sore feet by disciples with sore souls. A stranger joins them early, drawing them out of their silent brooding, getting them to talk. The day is spent in victim mode, as the disciples spill out all that has been done to Jesus and to them. The stranger interjects rays of hope, but they are overshadowed by the gray grief of the grieving men. And... Read more

Buncha malarkey. Snake oil. Quack, quack, quack. Christmas, yes. Easter, no. These are common human answers. Much more skeptical than Doubting Thomas, who, after all, was a part of the group around Jesus, had invested his life in this movement, would love him to be resurrected. Most of us, though, have got our guard up against being fooled, and against having our hearts moved, too. And never was skepticism more important for us to cultivate in ourselves than now. We... Read more

This year my Good Friday observance was in a large theater in Portsmouth, watching, with 800 other people, an array of short films about the human crucifixion of the earth, our shared body. The showing was a benefit for our Seacoast Land Trust. In all the films there was tragedy. And in all of them – there was hope as well, casting its grow light over us. In some , those who were the crucifiers changed themselves. And in others,... Read more

It’s Holy Week, and I had the chance to hear a high school senior tell his own awesome story. Four years ago he said, when he had stumbled into school with his therapist’s number on speed dial and a dozen razor blades in his bag. He’d been cutting himself regularly for a while. He wasn’t eating well, nor was he sleeping well, except when he was so drunk he passed out, so drunk his parents took turns sitting by his... Read more

The Last Days of Jesus, a two-part series PBS is showing now, tells a new and detailed account of the shifting politics between Rome and Israel in Jesus’ time. Scholars from Britain, the US, Canada, and Israel, tell this story from the historical views of two faiths, Christianity and Judaism. And they are in agreement that there is a lot to be known that we haven’t known till now. A network of ambitions and intrigue unite the Prefects (in Israel,... Read more

All the awe and magic that the last half of the 20th century allowed, that post-Apocalyptic, pragmatic age when everything had to be provable, that era before cyberspace and CGI technology and magical realism introduced us to deep mystery again – all the awe and magic  came into the world on the rich and holy Eves. The rich and holy Eves had come into the keeping of the years at least a thousand years before. Maybe three or four thousand,... Read more

It was the pictures of Syrian babies, being caressed by their helpless parents as they jerked and shivered in their neurological misery, victims of chemical death rained down upon them by the leader of their country, that moved the heart of the leader of my country to tenderness and action. And I ask, in God’s name, in the name of Allah, in the names of Shiva and Brahma, in the names of the teachers, of Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, in... Read more

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem produced a crowd, according to the gospel accounts. The crowd was large, loud, boisterous, happy. Evidence has surfaced that it was the habit of Roman Governors to require citizen attendance at the Damascus Gate when they entered with their troops, honoring them with branches and flowers. The Damascus Gate had a paved Roman road, wide enough to allow a legion to march in formation. Scholars  now surmise that Jesus’ entry through the gate known as the... Read more