I’m reading about the great Jewish texts these days, and find that the Rabbis often say beautiful things. This is from Qid 72b: “Mar said… No righteous person goes out of the world before a similar righteous person has been created. For it says, ‘The sun rises and the sun sets (Eccl. 1.5).’ Before Eli’s […]
The events, according to my poor recollection are here. Skip them if you know them: Late last summer, the Sierra Pacific Synod of the ELCA, my beloved Church body, met to elect a new bishop. I tuned in, excited they might elect Rev. Dr. Meghan Rohrer as not only the first transgender bishop of the […]
The first legislative bill I’ve ever read was today’s Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. It was introduced by Rep. Jim McGovern from my past home state of Massachusetts, and Rep. Marco Rubio of Florida helped to rewrite it so it could pass through the House. This bill treats foreign economic policy with the People’s Republic […]
Friends in Christ, Holy Saturday is perhaps my favorite day of the Church year. I’m not sure why. It should be a day of sorrow, of shock, when hope is lost. Not a day we celebrate in the church very often, mostly because it is a day filled with pain.
I saw this post on Facebook yesterday, sharing the letter from ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton on the abortion controversy going on in the American Southeast just now. I immediately clicked the “Share” button. Within two minutes, it occurred to me that sharing it to my friends on the same day as the birth of […]
There are many things about the Church here in Southeast Asia that are surprising to me, and quite different from my Northeast United States of American context back home. I expected that. I did not expect what those things would be.
Wednesday, I visited for three hours with a group of Muslims who were studying world religions in order to become more sensitive to diverse peoples as they carry out various social justice works. Today, gunmen opened fire in two mosques in New Zealand, wounding dozens of people and killing 49.
Not very long ago, at the height of public awareness of the incarceration of undocumented Latin and South American migrants near the United States border, I just couldn’t help myself. I was talking about the unexpectedly abundant joy in the Kingdom of God, the mustard seed parable, and slipped a few sentences about the current […]