Somehow I made it this far in life without knowing about Stanislav Petrov, the man who may have saved the world from nuclear annihilation. Petrov was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Forces in 1983, when he received a warning from the computerized Soviet early warning system of an imminent nuclear attack from […]
This past Sunday I was sharing with my congregation the story of Elijah in 1st Kings. Many of you know the story. He’d stood up for God, he’d stood up to the king, and he was on the run. He went to Mt. Horeb, and he waited. And then in chapter 19, verses 11-13, it […]
We don’t have to buy into the enmity that we see in so much of our national discourse. We don’t have to allow others to mold our feelings and opinions. John Philip Newell, the poet, peacemaker, minister and scholar, offers us a different vision, an alternative vision, a vision that may seem wildly at odds […]
“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It […]
The divine union of love and power “is strong enough to take on systems and not just individuals. It gives love the audacity to seek justice swiftly and not merely incrementally [and] it allows power to be informed by love and disrupt all that stands in the way of freedom. Our power, your power, my power is […]
We have an obligation to ourselves and our communities to be bigger than the moment. This moment is breaking my heart. Watching the dehumanizing behavior of my government, even from afar, brings feelings of anger and despair. I know this is not something new, and that makes the heartbreak even deeper. Our country’s long history […]
The great abolitionist of the 19th century, the former slave Frederick Douglass, once wrote: “I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer, until I prayed with my legs.” A similar statement is attributed to Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the great voices of faith of the 20th century. Rabbi Heschel marched […]
This week, the internet exploded with stories of families being separated at the border. Headlines were heartache: “Anguish at Southwest border…” “Ripping children from parents’ arms…” A policy of “zero tolerance” has created untenable, trauma-laden situations for families already at their breaking point. Between the stories we’ve heard and the images we’ve seen, our attention […]
If you had stayed tightfisted in the sky and watched us thrash with all the patience of a pipe smoker, I would pray like a golden bullet aimed at your heart. But the story says you cried and so heavy was the tear you fell with it to earth here like a baritone in a […]
Irenaeus [taught] that the glory of God is seen in a living human being. Let the light of that glory shine so brightly that everyone may come to recognize the inestimable value of all human life. Even the weakest and most vulnerable, the sick, the old, the unborn and the poor, are masterpieces of God’s […]
