This week I attended the memorial service of a beloved soul light. First my professor, later my friend and colleague, he was a Jesuit priest whose very life was a prayer of compassion and grace. There is a Unitarian Universalist story about prayer that goes something like this: Dear Whomever, Please… Thank you. In many ways it captures the human elements of life – a craving for intimacy and ultimacy, uncertainty, need, gratitude. It is possible to ask the universe... Read more
We human beings have many times many different prejudices. I’m not trying to make a value statement in saying that, just naming something that I believe is an inherent aspect of human nature. We are deeply prejudiced beings. The primary difference I have seen among human beings was whether or not they were aware of their prejudices. Why is it impossible for us to not be prejudiced? Because we are beings of infinite yearnings and finite knowledge. We feel called... Read more
One of the major themes of this election cycle has been one of individualism vs. “collectivism.” The argument of those on the individualist side seems to be that people need to take responsibility for themselves. If we do too much to shelter people from the harsher realities of life, then, it seems, people will lose initiative to take care of themselves and will become dependent on the system to support them. I can see the point of this argument. We... Read more
Politicians throw about plans for health care, Social Security, and Medicare as if they were stand-up comedians trying joke after joke to see what gets a rise out of their audience. To many of us, the effects of these plans are abstract and distant. We intellectually engage with them, thinking that our rational side is best when evaluating how our nation should take care of its old, poor, and vulnerable. Perhaps instead, we should feel something. This week, I’m feeling... Read more
Toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says to those gathered, “Judge not, that you not be judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it, will be measured to you.” He then goes on to illustrate this nugget of wisdom with the well known analogy of noticing the log in your own eye before taking the speck out of someone else’s eye. I experienced a moment of... Read more
One hundred and fifty years ago today, President Lincoln issued a Preliminary Proclamation that mandated the emancipation of all slaves in Confederate territory that did not return to the Union by January 1 of the following year. It was the beginning of the end of one of the greatest blots upon the face of liberty, a chattel system of coerced servitude in a nation founded upon ideals of equality and freedom. Lincoln was many things, but let us never forget... Read more
Last night I went to the movie, “Hope Springs.” For those who have not seen the previews, this is a movie about a couple (Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep) in a 31 year marriage where the thrill, as they say, is gone. It is about their journey towards getting the juice back into the marriage. My friend and I were worried about being a minute late and finding a good seat, but we need not have been. The Cineplex... Read more
I’m sure you’ve heard the aphorism, that violence never solves anything. It is a good line, one I have previously used myself. In the long view it even has some truth to it… violence often does lead to more and more complicated problems over time. The problem with it is that in the short view (and most human beings live in the short view) it is demonstrably untrue. Violence can seem, for awhile, to have solved some problems rather neatly. ... Read more
There are so many reasons to be filled with grief: the four diplomats whose lives were cut short and the families devastated by the amputation of a beloved person from their midst. The loss of trust between partners in the US and Libya working for peace and freedom. Our national sense of violation and vulnerability from an attack by extremist Muslims on our most tender, damaged day. But more than that, for me there is the grief that once again... Read more
The National Cathedral in Reykjavík is a modest edifice, as far as cathedrals go, and despite the fact that I’ve passed by it at least a hundred times on my visits to Iceland, I had never stepped inside—until last month. I’m not entirely sure why. I have ventured inside dozens of other churches in the country, although most of those either had some connection to my own family or some connection to other emigrants to North America. And like many... Read more
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