Here’s a link to an image of an icon of the Madonna and Child that speaks to me. In the spirit of Our Lady of Guadalupe, it shows Mary as one of the people. As it happens, I’ve worn Mary’s expression on more than one occassion.
This column was published on UPI’s Religion and Spirituality Forum on January 29, 2007. It headlined UPI’s mainpage that day as well.
In the foreword to his thought-provoking and very readable forthcoming biography of Joan of Arc, Joan: the Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint (due out from HarperSanFrancisco next month), Donald Spoto makes the following claim about the “Maid of Orleans”:
Joan fought and died to preserve the identity and particularity of a sovereign place; Continue reading
Last September I wrote a column reviewing the computer video game “Left Behind: Eternal Forces.” Last night an empolyee of the Left Behind corporation left a post taking me to task for my piece. I’m glad they noticed! Check it out and join the conversation.
This piece appeared on UPI’s Relgion and Spirituality Forum on January 21, 2007
Mainline Protestantism has a problem. I realize this is hardly news for anyone who has made even the most cursory of surveys into the landscape of American spirituality, but those of us who are part of the old guard of American Protestantism cannot seem to get along. Continue reading
This article appeared on UPI’s Religion and Spirituality Forum on January 15, 2007. It headlined the religion section of the UPI’s main page that day.
Today is the day set aside to celebrate the birth and to honor the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I’ve always felt this holiday to be a good day to take stock of how far we have come and how far we have yet to journey along the path toward building a society that honors and celebrates the beautiful diversity of the human family, but this year is different for me. Issues of race and society feel closer. Continue reading
This is a rough and unedited manuscript of the sermon I preached on January 14, 2007. The text for the sermon is Isaiah 62. I used the column I’d written for UPI’s Religion and Spirituality Forum (to be published on January 15) as a starting point. Continue reading
This column was published on UPI’s Religion and Spirituality Forum on January 8, 2007
“My God, is there any sin worse than indifference?”–from Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen
Last month, while hiking in the woods along Big River, near my hometown of Mendocino on California’s North Coast, my ten-year-old nephew Justin found the skeletal remains of a young man who had been missing for twenty seven years. Continue reading