Category: Intra-Faith
Is “Common ground” Exclusive?
When I came to seminary I immediately jumped in to the world of pluralism and interfaith studies. Much of my own questioning and faith journey had been inspired by people of other faiths, and I was in... Read More
Atonement, Not Attunement: The Beauty of Repentance
I’m all too familiar with Christian guilt. One side of my family is Irish Catholic (they of the famed “Catholic guilt”) and the other side a mix of Appalachian Protestants, from the backwoods Ba... Read More
Lost and Found: Interfaith Dialogue and Rediscovering Religious History
I am currently in the middle of The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia–and How It Died, by the renowned historia... Read More
Careful Forgiveness: Atoning with Life in the New Year
“Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us.” Pablo Neruda Yom Kippur is the Jewish day of atonement between humanity and the divine. Jewish tradition dictates that atonement between h... Read More
Making Meaning at Middlebury from the “Balagan Kadosh” (Holy Mess)
Tisha B’Av was coming. It was the beginning of July, on a fresh, hot morning in the Middlebury College Hillel. Tisha B’Av, the fast day in the Jewish calendar that commemorates the destruction of ... Read More
Pluralism in Light of Spiritual “Shoppers”
I begin this post with a confession: I am a spiritual shopper. By a spiritual shopper, I am referring to those who are in flux between different traditions, but searching for a place among them. Much ... Read More
Stumbling Blocks: Conversion and the Israeli Rabbinate
The issue of conversion to Judaism has always been a topic of interest to me, as it is simultaneously an interfaith and intra-faith issue. Each of the denominations within Judaism has their own standa... Read More
In Search of Kailash
For the past several years I have been working with a team of scholars, writers, artists and educators preparing for a month-long religious pilgrimage to Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar in western ... Read More