When I heard about the Boston marathon bombings — it happened via TV in a North Dakota seniors’ residence my wife’s parents live in — tears lept to my eyes and that terrible, familiar taste of 9/11 rage rose up inside. This time there was no creepy Osama bin Laden character to blame. Two young guys, foreign yes but also […]

Is there any word or sentiment which is off limits these days? Last week, talk radio shrieker Pete Santilli accused Hillary Clinton of being involved with the killing of American troops in Benghazi, Libya. And then he offered this: “I want to shoot her right in the vagina and I don’t want her to die right away. I want her […]

I’ve lived in intentional community here at Jesus People USA for the past thirty six years and counting. And I’m going to say it. Sometimes I just hate community. Yes, I mean it. Community is the place where people you’ve lived with for decades still have a peculiar knack for getting on your last nerve. Community is where some cheerful […]

So. Anthony Weiner is in the news again. The first time his sexting scandal made the news, I began writing this column but stopped in order to adopt a gentler tone. This time around, after it was revealed he continued sexting and sending nude photos to various women well after the initial scandal cost him his job, I have decided […]

My parents loved poetry. Better yet, they knew how to make that love contagious. My mother recited Keats and Browning (both Brownings) from memory, fitting them to our own lives, while my father… my father gave us Dylan Thomas and “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” Prose to some, but poetry to me. My father’s voice was wonderful to hear, not […]

A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. That is how Scripture describes our Lord Jesus Christ. Look into your enemy’s heart and you’ll see pain there. Perhaps, yes, it is pain he or she made for themselves. And perhaps it is pain someone else made for them, or fear instills in them. Before you respond to your enemy, remember their […]

“My spiritual pain is unbearable. I keep having the same unsolved question: if my rifle claimed people’s lives, then can it be that I… a Christian and an Orthodox believer, was to blame for their deaths?” — Mikhail Kalashnikov Not long before his death in December 2013 (he was 94), Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47 rifle, wrote a letter […]

When I was young, and someone was rude to me, I nearly always let them know it. Words are my domain, baby, so don’t tap my turntable. But now that I’m floating in the sea of middle-age, I find my response is usually to just be quiet and take it. Too much energy expended to reprove ‘em, and there’s usually […]

Paul Robeson, the legendary African-American singer, actor, and social activist, was in a little-known 1940 film, “The Proud Valley.” Documenting the lives of Welsh coal miners, the film did something unheard of and made a black actor the star of a mostly-white cast movie. More than that, it also offered a mix of piety and social activism which within just […]

What follows began as a short paragraph or two and turned into a reflection upon larger things. Confession at the outset: No, I have not read the “Shades of Grey” series and I never shall. I have read fairly extensively reviews of the books both pro and con, as well as some lengthy clips from the books (the first one […]