Category: Challenges
Compassion: Not Just For Saints Any More
Compassion is an emotion—a response to the suffering of others and an accompanying desire to eliminate or minimize such suffering, or, at least, to make it more bearable. Compassion is hard, but bei... Read More
Advent, the Mason Jar Mentality & the War on Christmas
In the latest edition of the Journal of Interreligious Dialogue, I wrote an article describing the ways in which civil religions become actualized and operationalized in the American South. Through se... Read More
With my eyes I can take everything from you: Rededicating ourselves to seeing Black lives
Chanukah is a festival of lights, which makes it an opportunity to reflect on what we see and how we see it. The rituals of Chanukah are all about light and seeing: we’re commanded to kindle Chanuka... Read More
#WeCantBreathe and Advent
On Sunday, December 7, there was a message preached at the Memorial Church of Harvard University. It was an urgent and powerful call, and it affected each person who walked out of that morning worship... Read More
More Than Just the Baby in the Manger
Sometimes the timing of things does make me believe in alignments of stars or planets or fate, in a terrible kind of way. I wake up this morning to the news of the attack on the Peshawar school in Pak... Read More
The Illusion of Separation
Every core part of my identity that I love and treasure has a history of oppression that comes with it. I am African-American. I am a woman. I am in a same gender loving relationship. And I am a pract... Read More
Obama Administration Renews Lease on Racial Profiling
Originally Published in TIME.com On Monday, the Obama Administration unveiled updated guidance on how federal law enforcement should address racial profiling. Rather than discarding the ineffective pr... Read More
A Reflection on the Ask-a-Muslim Billboard Controversy
If you were from Columbus Ohio, you would know that Cleveland Avenue is a dangerous stretch of road. It has had the rather dubious distinction of being rated the “most dangerous intersection in Colu... Read More