Private benevolence will not relieve world poverty, ease third-world debt, promote full employment, stop the mangling of the environment, mitigate obscene excesses of wealth, or negate all the damaging alienation that exists between groupings of people such as "Jew...
Proximity has taught me some basic and humbling truths, including this vital lesson: Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. My work with the poor and the incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of...
The darkest time in the year, The poorest place in the town, Cold, and a taste of fear, Man and Woman alone, What can we hope for here? More lights than we can learn, More wealth than we can treasure, More love than we can earn, More peace than we can measure, Because...
How are we to experience peace in a world filled with war and destruction, hurricanes and greed? …Prayers are offered for peace and Nobel prizes are awarded for it. But more frequently, peace seems as distant as the moon… The world whizzes by at breakneck speed as its...
Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least...
When medical bills are the biggest cause of bankruptcy in the United States, there are systemic injustices at work. When people working 40-hour weeks at minimum wage jobs still can’t earn enough to support their families, there are systemic injustices at work. When...
If you lose your wealth, you have lost nothing; if you lose your health, you have lost something; but if you lose your character, you have lost everything.
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this...