American Christianity’s War with Itself
“Who do people say that I am?” Jesus asks, and everyone has a different answer. King, prophet, peasant, rebel, son, shepherd, rabbi, redeemer—to this day, Jesus is what each of us needs him to be.
Belief
All The World’s Wisdom
A solid old brick house on Clayton Road with a sign outside: Living Insights Center. A meeting place, maybe, some kind of recovery program? I step inside. In the first room to the right, a lifesize statue of St. Therese of Lisieux gazes at an illuminated Qur’an, a silver menorah,…
The Uneasy Award of Divine Solace
I am not losing my faith. I am wondering where that religion truly is. Is this really the place where God Himself enters into physical form in our midst?
How We Could Keep Holy
The tech bros must have stumbled onto Abraham Heschel’s book about the Sabbath.
The Prejudice Young People Have Made Their Own
People worried sick about bigotry used to murmur, “Our hope is the young people.” Now the opposite is true.
Fighting with the Buddha
Why would I not desire a good Camembert, or a sweater soft as a lamb?
Standing at the Edge of Two Worlds
Having lived in the United States for a few years, I have either struggled to understand democracy in practice or struggled to keep up with it.
Dig Out Your Crystal Ball
My friend is a little witchy, a little woowoo. She gets “feelings” before something happens.... Does precognition exist?
The Unmoving Grasshopper and the Oddball Friends Who Say “I Love You”
Why is it only certain characters among my friends—the recovered addict who got rich off disaster services, the photographer who did federal time on a RICO conviction, the former scout and paratrooper with traumatic brain injury—tell me they love me? My polite friends, the “normal” ones, the ones with long, seemingly solid marriages and steady white-collar jobs and no priors, do not say such things, despite often having been in my life longer or more directly.
Dare We Say It? The Bible Is a Messy Book
Somehow I had come to think of the Bible as stuck together from the start, a sacred, ordained book on which we speak our oaths...