Today’s reading from the Jewish scriptures contains many powerful lessons that remain relevant thousands of years later, including some important truths about faith, human nature, and class distinctions. Along the way, it also shows how important it is to listen to the people in your life, even those whom you doubt have anything important to say. Naaman was a powerful and important man, the head general of the armies of the king of Syria to the north of the kingdom... Read more
Christianity, or any branch of it, loses its Christian character when its self-proclaimed supporters outnumber and outshout its actual adherents. Marilynne Robinson Is the United States a Christian nation? Attempts to answer this disputed question usually focus on specific language in the founding documents of the United States, quotations from the correspondence and essays of the Founding Fathers, what percentage of the citizenry identifies as “Christian,” and individual interpretations of history. It’s a familiar debate in which the various sides tend... Read more
I ran an informal experiment on Facebook not long ago, the point of which was to see how quickly it would take people to get upset and defensive over something that, arguably, is not worth getting upset or defensive about. It’s shocking how easily I can be entertained, especially when seeking to avoid more important things that I should be doing or thinking about. I posted that There are two kinds of people. People who back into parking spots and... Read more
Throughout the gospel lectionary readings in Ordinary Time, Jesus regularly says surprising things that contradict our traditional notions of proper ethical behavior. Here’s a section from my forthcoming book A Year of Faith and Philosophy that explores this issue. The gospel readings during Ordinary Time regularly include difficult teachings from Jesus. For instance, in the Proper 7 Year A reading from Matthew [last week], Jesus says that I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against... Read more
Some time ago I read the first few pages of Greg Epstein’s Good without God. Epstein is the Humanist chaplain at Harvard University; Jeanne gave me a heads up after she heard him being interviewed on NPR. I appreciated the first few pages of Epstein’s introduction, where he takes the new atheists to task for their failure to take religious belief seriously, but it was Epstein’s definition of God that fully caught my attention. Humanists believe that God is the... Read more
A couple of weeks ago in the morning I was greeted in the driveway with Luther having a completely flat tire on the passenger front side (Luther is the name of our 2013 Ford Fusion—long story). We have the highest level of Triple A coverage, so I could have just called them and waited for some young punk to show up and put our donut spare tire on so I could drive to the local tire store (which has taken... Read more
Today’s lectionary readings contain two of my favorites, both from the Jewish scriptures. The story of Elijah running for his life from Jezebel is part of my forthcoming book A Year of Faith and Phlosophy, as I posted late last summer. Get Up and Eat But today I focus on Psalm 46, which reminds me of a meaningful encounter with a deer while on retreat, as I described three years ago. As the deer longs for streams of water, so my... Read more
As I continue to work through my next book project that has been on the shelf for eighteen months or so, I am often surprised by something that I had forgotten about. This is a section from a late chapter in the book–the section is called “A Conference Story.” It seems oddly current. Almost a decade after the Paris conference, I found myself on an Amtrak Acela headed for yet another conference on Simone Weil, where I would be reconnecting... Read more
My brother and I stay in contact most regularly on Facebook, where he had the audacity to share this meme the other day: Not one to accept bullshit easily, I immediately responded with this: “This is in response to my demented older brother who prefers hockey to basketball.” Side note: Here’s the real difference between my older brother and me. His meme was shared from someone else’s site. I made mine myself. Now that I know how easy it is... Read more
I’m re-working a full draft of my next book project–Nice Work If You Can Get It: Lessons and Stories from a Life in the Classroom–this summer in hopes of getting a publisher (or agent) in hand by next semester. I’ve organized it in nine chapters with a “Classroom Interlude” between each of the chapters. Here’s one of those interludes . . . A Polish Franciscan priest. A Lutheran pastor and theologian. A French, Jewish social activist attracted to Marxism. A... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In