There are, in fact, very few times in human history when two or more sizably significant groups of people encounter each other and neither one has any actual idea who, or even what, the other group is...Read More
Summer 2010. I am in Indonesia. None of my doctors are on the same page, but they all agree that something is wrong. One Saturday my shoulder freezes at the joint and I can’t lift it more than four ...Read More
I try to be as generous as possible. I try to listen first, think things through, give others the benefit of the doubt. But when someone says something so ignorant, so poorly thought-out, and so disho...Read More
I always felt self-conscious and wishful when I prayed. I couldn’t stay focused. I hoped that a class on personal prayer would help me, so I took a course in the spring of my first year at Union, Th...Read More
When we receive news, we are being invited into a transaction of words, but we are not told what to do with them. We respond.... When words respond to words, we call it “education” and “dialogue...Read More
A while back I found out that my partner was a sex addict who had been leading a boozy secret life full of violence fetishes, endangerment of women, unprotected sex, compulsive pornographic email exch...Read More
Over at Religion Dispatches Levi McLaughlin, a professor of religion who specializes in East Asian traditions, writes about Tokyo’s governor Shintaro Ishihara describing the tsunami that struck...Read More
A college chaplain once candidly described the process for him, as a Protestant, as one of simultaneous celebration and mourning when he recognized that Protestantism was no longer a universal norm on...Read More
Historically, when people have found themselves in conflicts over the best way to live or the very purpose of life, they have often found a way to separate from—if not fight—each other to protect ...Read More