The miracle of Pentecost wasn't that everyone spoke the same, but that all were "understood" in their native tongue. The fulfillment of Gospel is not assimilation/uniformity to one culture, but rather togetherness and mutuality within diverse cultural expression....
We are all so closed in and we don't even know it: by our language, by our cultures, by our religions, by our sex, by our age. So how can we possibly expect that we know God? I feel as if my life has been spent straining to see through a knothole the size of a pinhead...
In every culture there are persons who fill the position of community elders. These are men and women whose wisdom, generosity of spirit, wide concern, and inclusive love equip them to care for people beyond their kith and kin. Their goal is not just the well-being of...
And there are two reasons that people won’t tell you that they’re afraid. First, because our culture has taught us that fear is something to be ashamed of. But far more than that, because we’re concerned that if we share our fear, you’ll push us to go forward, and...
The word “scapegoating” originated from an ingenious ritual described in Leviticus 16. According to Jewish law, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest laid hands on an “escaping” goat, placing all the sins of the Jewish people from the previous year onto the animal....
One of the most serious dangers confronting those who minister in the city is that their lives come to be built on frenzy and compulsive busyness. This usually leads to a lack of focus, a tendency to accumulate more and more things, a collapse of reflection, and the...
Our culture insists in looking for things we can measure, signs of a life well lived through metrics like health, strength, and success, but maybe we, too, should start listening for new vital signs; beds surrounded by loved ones, legacies of kindness and generosity,...
The psyche is boundlessly rich. Fed by people, and places, the natural world, by art and music, not to mention various cultural symbols, our reservoir of imagery is brimming--if we take time to notice. from The Nature of Music
It would be hard to deny that contemporary British (and most Western) Christianity is in an advanced state of syncretism. The church has lived so long as a permitted and even privileged minority, accepting regulation to the private sphere in a culture whose public...
Society called the blind sinful, a female child useless, a menstruating woman unclean, all of them marginal to the system, condemned to the fringes of life, excluded from the center of the synagogue, barred from the heart of the temple. But Jesus takes each of them to...