Everyone loves an underdog—in sports, politics, historical battles—but it’s usually when that person is involved in some kind of heated competition. What about the average guy who just beats back difficult life circumstances and comes out ahead?
Traveling recently with a friend who was accompanied by a very difficult teenager, I felt a bit like Moses in the desert with his band of tired and frustrated followers. On the one hand, I wanted to be sympathetic and understanding to the needs and challenges of the teenager; on the other hand, I wanted to say to this young person, who had nothing nice to say to anyone about anything, “Enough already! Show some respect.”
A remarkable story about Saint Francis tells of a brother who was a community leader having a very difficult time with a brother who was what we sometimes call a “repeat offender.” It’s not clear what the offender did, but it was so disheartening to the leader that he asked Saint Francis if he could just retire and go live as a hermit!
RECONSTRUCTING a school is a big job anywhere. It’s especially difficult when that school is located in war-torn Mozambique and needed just about everything: money, desks, and equipment, among other essentials.
IN THE EARLY DAYS of civil rights legislation taking hold in the American South, an African American woman, Norah Jones, boarded a crowded bus, paid her fare, and found that the only free seat was next to a well-dressed white woman about her own age. That woman stiffened a bit with an insincere smile as she sat down but showed no other reaction.
All Are Welcome isn’t a motto or a song. It is a goal that we can only reach together.
I wanted to be totally alone and crawl inside my head for a while. What better place to do that than among the isolation of farmland and mountains and forests? But it was hardly a peaceful drive.
As director Michael Moore concluded in his 2002 documentary exploring violence in America, Bowling for Columbine, what sets violent America apart from other countries is a steady diet of gloom and doom.
AS THE LONG DAYS OF SUMMER stretch out before us, do yourself a favor and spend time on a beach—a quiet beach, a beach made for long walks and deep thoughts. If you give yourself the rare treat of sun, sand, and solitude, you will eventually uncover treasures buried deep within you.
Jesus knew the power of metaphor, and that is what parables are: What seems abstract or unimaginable suddenly comes to life by comparison with things we can grasp, like the Kingdom of God being like a mustard seed.