Memorial Day and Remembrance On Memorial Day, we remember. We remember war, death, and those we love. We remember the importance of community and country, the warmth of family and hearth. That which we are willing to fight for, we remember on this day. Soldiers may hope they are fighting for freedom. After all, they say that liberty is the foundation of our country. It’s what the Statue of Liberty stands for; it’s part of her name. On a bronze plaque inside the statue is the poem, “Colossus,” written by Emma Lazarus. It contains the well-known words: “Give us your tired, your poor,/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”…
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The Importance of Paying Attention
Coddling and Kindness Father Gregory Boyle, who welcomes hardened gang members into compassionate community through his nonprofit Homeboy Industries, has been accused of “coddling” these young men and women. Detractors say this as if coddling were a terrible thing, perhaps as bad as throttling them. On “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” Fred Rogers used to gaze kindly into the eye of the camera to make his television listeners feel that he was talking directly to them. Then, he’d say, “You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being you.” For this, he has been blamed for creating a generation of selfish brats who think they deserve to rewarded for doing…
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Evil, Idolatry, and Life
Paul and Religious Authority Nearly thirty years ago, when I started seminary, I read an article about the letters written by that ancient Christian leader, Paul. In it, the author quoted an ex-slave who said she never read Paul because white preachers had used his words against her and her loved ones, quoting Colossians 3:22: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is upon you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord” (NIV). She knew that didn’t come from God. If that was the kind of thing Paul wrote, she would have nothing to…
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The What and the Why of Love
Why Love? “What is love for?” That was the first question. It was a Sunday afternoon at the Recovery Church meeting. As is typical, we had strayed from our original topic. A phrase in the reading, a chance comment, had struck one or the other of us, and the question was asked: “What is love for?” After a pause, one of us said, “To make life tolerable.” That reminded me of what the fantasy writer, Lloyd Alexander wrote about art. “We have always needed good art to sustain us, to strengthen us, even to console us for being born human.” [1] Love does this, too. Yet love does more than…
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The Love that Saves
Does Love Save? During a recent sharing circle, the question of love came up. What kind of love can save the world, we wondered, and how we might learn to love in that way? Saving the world is a sweet idea. I’ve written about how joy could save the world, so why not love? Yet to think we can save an entire planet is also absurd, at least if by saving we mean that one day there will be peace and cooperation everywhere, respect, and generosity, and a deep, abiding kindness. Such values exist in pockets in every country and in every village, but so does animosity. All these and more are part…
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Choice, Transformation, and Love
The Nature of Reality Each January, as the year turns, we move into something new. We cross a threshold. We transition from memory to hope. The future spreads out before us, and possibilities abound. Many of us eagerly plan our resolutions, hoping they will transform turn us into the person we always wanted to be. Unfortunately, our plans rarely play out the way we expect them to. According to my elder son, this is because we have less control over our life than we like to think. For him, existence is an intricate interplay of events, occasions, thoughts, and experiences that weave and develop in ways beyond our comprehension. As…
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Religion, Christmas, and Reason
Honoring the Return of the Sun The winter solstice has come and gone. Even as we venture into the chill of winter, we can take comfort in knowing that today’s light will last a little longer than yesterday’s. Cultures around the world celebrate this return of the sun. In Iran, for instance, there is Yalda, a night when the people stay awake until morning to protect themselves against evil forces that are particularly strong at this time. They eat pomegranates and watermelon, and they read the poems of Hafiz. At dawn, they welcome the return of Ahura Mazda, the lord of wisdom. In the best of worlds, Yalda is a…
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The Chaos of Our Time, Listening, and Forgiveness
Chaos and the Naivete of Forgiveness Given the chaos breaking out across our nation and in the world, the rise of a hateful nationalism, and the brutal attacks on human decency and human lives that have been encouraged by our own president, it seems naive to write about listening and forgiveness. In less than a month there have been two major mass shootings; Christine Blasey Ford continues to receive death threats; our president has named Matthew Whitaker, a critic of the Mueller investigation, as “acting” Attorney General; and as he has always done, he undermines our democracy and foments crises that almost seem designed to divert our attention from important matters such as…
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Holding Ourselves Accountable and the Importance of Feelings
Managing Our Feelings The details are fuzzy. I think we were at some kind of party, maybe a birthday for one of my son’s friends. We mothers were hanging out with the kids, chatting, watching them play. Near me stood a woman I didn’t know well. Her boy was perhaps seven years old. I have no memory of what the child did or said. Probably, I hadn’t noticed. Whatever it was, it triggered in his mother an impressive outrage. Grabbing her son by the arm, she turned to me and said, “We have to leave. He’s upset me so much, I’m just too angry to enjoy myself any longer.” Her…
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Kindness and “Projective Disgust”
Kindness in Folk Tales A common theme in folk tales is the younger brother or sister who is kind to the needy fish, or old woman, or bird and thus is rewarded, while the selfish older brother or sister is punished for being mean. The moral of such stories is that kindness pays. Today, you would think that hardly anyone had read those old stories. When I told my husband I was writing a column about kindness, he said, “You should call it, ‘Kindness is Dead.’” He was referring, of course, to the loud and angry voices of extremists so prevalent in the United States and around the world. These…