One Song Every war and every conflictbetween human beings has happenedbecause of some disagreement about names.It is such an unnecessary foolishness,because just beyond the arguingthere is a long table of companionshipset and waiting for us to sit down.What is praised...
There we'll all be, gathered around the banquet table, not just the perfect people but also the other 99.9 percent of humanity. The prodigal son and his hard-partying buddies, the joyful father; the oldest son, and his responsible friends too, they're all there along...
The experiment with faith is the work of a lifetime, a continual openness to change, a permanent quest. What I learned serving at the altar was not which Eucharistic theology was "right." What I learned, and must always be learning and relearning, is who Jesus is, and...
For far too long, Christians used the Bible as a weapon and not as a mirror. The gospel for oppression instead of liberation. The church as a judgment gavel, not a table of inclusion. And Jesus as their mascot instead of the example. Time to flip the tables.
In his daily practice, Jesus rebelled calmly against the deepest rules of his world. He lived his own parable of the Banquet and the injunctions of the master in it: “Go therefore to the thoroughfare and invite to the marriage feast as many as you can find.” In the...
It is too small a thing to redeem only a few. God wants us all. This good news deserves our full acceptance. Thomas Merton wrote, “A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found; for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough...
Grace means there is nothing I can do to make God love me more, and nothing I can do to make God love me less. It means that I, even I who deserve the opposite, am invited to take my place at the table in God’s family.
What do we experience by eating together? We share the host’s hospitality. And hospitality is at the core of our spiritual life. Most of our day is spent experiencing how we are different from one another—our race, our economic status, our education, our language, our...