Category: Learning
Politics of grace
Like many people who celebrate Christmas (or get a holiday for it regardless), I have just headed out of my usual climate to go see family for the time I get off of school. Like many people, I knew ... Read More
I Am Not Ashamed
Scriptures travel. Many people talk about ‘religious traditions’ as if they were nation states with clear and tightly guarded borders, but of course the borders of a tradition are porous a... Read More
Becoming Aware of the Religious Other
I lead a scriptural reasoning group at the University of Toronto that has an open door policy. That means in any given week I do not know who will attend and who will not. It usually means a regular... Read More
Finding Jesus at the Texas-Mexico Border
It was cold and windy on the last morning of our trip to the Rio Grande Valley. We sat at a wooden table toward the back of the restaurant, warming ourselves with coffee and eating breakfast tacos. Ci... Read More
Giving Thanks, Acting Gratitude
As we approach Thanksgiving in the US, it seems like a good time to revisit the idea of gratitude I wrote about during the most recent Ramadan. The relationship between “gratitude” and “thanks,... Read More
Unrateable Terrors
I help teach a university course on The Holocaust in Historical Context. It is, it should be, impossible to remain unaffected by immersive study of Western Antisemitism and how religious, economic, po... Read More
You use the words you know
One of the unexpected things I have told friends about in my learning to speak Arabic over the past five years is the fact that I am much more talkative in Arabic than I am in English. In Arabic, my... Read More
Sticking the Poor with Climate Change: People, Power, and Privilege
As I write this, I am sitting at my kitchen table while my ten-year old, home from school today with a fever, watches a movie upstairs. It is a bright, beautiful fall day in Austin, Texas—and part o... Read More