Blog
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
I had not told the old man that I was expecting my first child, but somehow he knew. And I never forgot.
TOLERANCE
A few years ago, a seven-year-old boy waving a Pop Tart and saying “bang bang” was suspended from school in Maryland. The school had a “zero-tolerance” policy regarding guns, and the Pop Tart crossed the line.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
Psychology’s “soul” was a casualty in the war between the spiritually alive and the spiritually dead.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
More than 30 years ago, Ivanir dos Santos began combating racial discrimination and promoting rights of members of minority groups; he has never faltered in that mission. Today a priest of the much-discriminated-against Candomblé religion, Mr. dos Santos’ most visible achievement is the “Walk in Defense of Religious Freedom” in Rio de Janeiro. The walk has become “an annual event that draws some 50,000 participants from diverse religious backgrounds, including Candomblé, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Spiritualists, and atheists.”
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that a 40-foot-high cross honoring residents of the Maryland town of Bladensburg killed in World War I will be allowed to remain on the public land for which it has stood for almost one hundred years.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
You walk into the bathroom and a large, black graffitied swastika greets you. It’s big, it’s ugly and it exudes an almost living presence, defying you to respond in some way. You’re 11 years old, you have fifteen minutes to get back to class, you’re in a new school, you just started making friends, and you don’t want to rock the boat.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
Damning headlines and unforgivable scandal have, in recent times, become synonymous in the media with the Catholic Church, and I admire and applaud the journalists and survivors who have been brave enough to share their stories and demand justice. But the mistakes and sins of those responsible, even (and maybe especially) those at the highest level, are not Catholicism and are not religion.
TOLERANCE
Religion is tough to talk about. It’s true. And instead of welcoming the chance to learn something new, we tend to shy away from the whole thing, perhaps because it seems like too tricky a road to travel.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
I, for one, don’t believe it. Don’t get me wrong. I believe the statistics, the surveys and the opinions. I believe the anger and the hostility. What I don’t believe is that this is who we really are.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
The late astronomer and teacher, Carl Sagan, requested that the Voyager 1 spacecraft, in its journey through the cosmos, pause at the edge of our solar system and take a photo of the Earth as seen from that perspective before traveling on. The scientists at NASA granted his request and, on February 14, 1990, the resulting image, transmitted from 4 billion miles away, shows our planet as it is in the universe: a pale blue dot, barely the size of the period at the end of this sentence.
