Tikkun and Red-Letter Christians

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We Catholics, on the other hand, get steeped in the Gospels and then eventually get around to studying Paul’s writings. Not that there are contradictions between them, but you’ll have to admit that there’s a different ‘feel’ if you understand Jesus with Pauline theology rather than coming to Paul’s writings steeped in the lifestyle and values prescribed by Jesus.” When I asked the consequences of these differing emphases, he answered, “You Evangelicals turn out television evangelists, whereas we turn out Mother Teresa.”

2011

How the Light Gets In

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In truth, we all have a deep longing for holiness, even those whose actions seem to belie this need — those for whom words like community and justice have become distorted and degraded. It is only bitter disappointment in the absence of the holy that makes human longing turn to movements like the Tea Party, a movement clearly fueled by anger and divisiveness.

2011

Polarities to the Rescue

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What is your passion? Find it — or let it find you — and, from that ecstasy, act to make the world better, more just, more joyous. It is only from such ecstasy, from such an energy-producing position outside of (ex) the fixed place (stasis) of things, that tikkun comes about.

2011

Internal and External Challenges for Muslims

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While barriers to understanding and implementing human rights are the biggest challenge facing the community from within, particularly in the international context, from without, Islamophobia is a huge problem. The Danish cartoon controversy is a prominent case in which there was a marked failure of communication.

2011

A Christian Realist’s Lament

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For someone who interprets the course of events from a Christian realist perspective, the prospects for healing and repairing the world appear less than promising. That defines the position I happen to occupy. Although my admiration for those who insist otherwise knows no bounds, I find myself unable to enlist under their banner: over the course of many centuries, evil has proven to be too persistent; humankind’s penchant for folly too great; the allure of mammon too insidious; and power in all its variegated forms too corrupting.

2011

Reconciling Outer and Inner Enlightenment

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Utopian as it may sound, I believe that the hope for significant reform in the United States as a whole must also create a strong civil society in which the competing demands of faith and reason have somehow been reconciled.

Articles

Balancing Activism and the Cosmic

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The death of my father last April caused me to reflect anew on where we agreed and where we disagreed. When I was a college student, we would debate capitalism and socialism. Over the years I came to realize that people would be much better off under the capitalist system he envisioned than under any of the capitalist or socialist realities today.

2011

Hope and Healing – A Moment of Mishnah

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It isn’t enough to assert that dry goes with dry and wet goes with wet. What happens when life is more complex than our sorrow and our fear might suggest? What about when something that once worked becomes broken in the course of its use?

2011

May We Always “Hold Each Other’s Arms Up”

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I’ve had the privilege of working with a kaleidoscope of issues from local to global: disarmament, economic justice, labor justice, decolonization, indigenous sovereignty, homelessness, urban ministry, community organizing, gang diversion, immigrant rights, hospice, food justice, water rights, environmental protection, fair housing, literacy, solidarity, inclusion — not to mention all the relational work that glues together (or doesn’t) such work.

2011

The Missing Ingredient

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It would appear, however, that Rabbi Papa was perhaps not really completely empathetic with the plight of his community. He was the head rabbi, so of course it was expected of him that he would take some kind of action, like decreeing a day of fasting and prayer. But social activism requires more than a functionary response to society’s maladies.

2011

In Celebration of the Mustard Seeds

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Melanie Klein says the more resentment grows, the less room is left for gratitude, and the more gratitude grows, the less impetus toward resentment. I believe it. I believe it! I’ve experienced it.