The account of Jesus’ birth in Luke’s gospel is a familiar story. It relates a miraculous conception announced by an angel; a young girl’s trusting assent to...
The Examined Life
I believe in the communion of saints. These words take flesh in the early morning quiet of my apartment. I sink into the worn recliner and flip open my Bible...
A teaching evaluation once observed that I was “not afraid of silence” in the classroom. In reality, learning to be comfortable with silence was the hardest...
Memories are an important part of being human. When we come together for family meals, for example, we often tell stories of shared experiences, anecdotes of...
The desert fathers tell this story: Abba Lot came to Abba Joseph and said, “Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my...
Spiritually, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris has been an important prayer space in my life. Vespers in that space was a privileged moment in which I felt...
The Stonewall Inn of New York sits in a quiet part of an often bustling city. Its interior and exterior are rather nondescript. Other than a commemorative...
The memory shared in many elementary school classrooms goes something like this: One day, after a long shift at work, an exhausted Rosa Parks sat down on a...
In a room full of anxious ninth graders, you could hear a pin drop. Before handing out the math exam, we began with silent prayer. As each began to pray to...
Recently, I had the privilege of having a conversation with Michelle Alexander, author of the influential book The New Jim Crow: Colorblindness in an Age of...
