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The Donkey and the Stallion – A Fresh Holy Week Perspective
Jesus’ anti-empire messaging was never quite grasped by those who followed him. Its difficult to be critical of them for that though, as we still don’t grasp that message today.
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Learning Friendship From Children
When I was a child, probably around the period of preschool through first grade, I was cared for after school by the parents of a school friend until my parents came home from work, along with about five other children. I have numerous memories, some clearer than others, of the six of us playing hide-and-seek,…
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Climate Change and the Sacrificial Christ
“Our mistreatment of the natural world diminishes our own dignity and sacredness, not only because we are destroying resources that future generations of humans need, but because we are engaging in actions that contradict what it means to be human. Our tradition calls us to protect the life and dignity of the human person, and…
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“You Give Them Something to Eat”
A recent conversation about the responsibilities of humans in the effort toward fighting human injustice has weighed greatly on my mind for a while now. It centered around the capability and the responsibility that humans do or do not have to work to alleviate suffering and fight for change to create a more just and…
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Advent: A Season of Antici……..pation
For reasons unknown, Advent was not a tradition that existed in the great Evangelical bubble of my youth. I don’t know precisely why, and there were probably multiple reasons. Perhaps the fact that Advent was recognized by Catholics and Episcopalians made it a scary thing for Evangelical fundamentalists who seemed to think those were different…
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Bibliolatry: When the Bible Becomes an Idol
I find it a bit surprising that in a world where Christianity is such a dominant phenomenon, at least in terms of raw numbers, that the Gospel hasn’t really transformed the world to the extent you would expect. When I look at the picture in my own American context, I see a country that is…
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World Religions – How Other Faith Traditions Can Deepen Our Own
We are in the middle of a class at my church (St. John’s Church Columbus) in which we are studying some of the major religions of the world. This has always been a topic that has fascinated me, even in the world of fundamentalist Christianity in which I was raised. At that time, world religions…
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Divine Mystery, and the Power of “I Don’t Know”
“Remember, mystery isn’t something that you cannot understand – it is something that you can endlessly understand! There is no point at which you can say, ‘I’ve got it.’ Always and forever, mystery gets you!” -Richard Rohr, from The Divine Dance It is easy to understand why people are often attracted to systems of belief…
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My Top 10 Movies – A (Sort Of) Break From the Spiritual
There are a lot of people in the bloggersphere doing top 10 favorite movie lists lately, so I thought I would take a (sort of) break from writing about my spiritual journey and join in the festivities. I say sort of because there are certain movies that I tend to view, at least in part,…
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With Gratefulness for What I’ve Learned from Women Who Didn’t Stay Quiet
In the Christian atmosphere in which I was brought up, the couple of times I ever heard teaching about the Caananite woman in the Gospel of Matthew chapter fifteen, the impression I was meant to come away with was that Jesus had really shown grace to a woman who had had sort of butted her…