Photo Credit: NASA (Kuiper Belt) Ok, I admit. I’m a card-carrying, bona fide believer in extraterritorial intelligent life. I have visited Roswell, New Mexico on the anniversary of its museum and spoken to people who knew directly of the events surrounding the interplanetary evidence that landed there in 1947. We studied government documents and correspondence... Continue Reading →
“I have come for division” (Luke13:51) What Does This Mean?
This coming Sunday, Christians will hear a part of Luke’s gospel which will disturb us, make us squirm a bit in the pew, distract us to think about the upcoming picnic or our favorite team’s exhibition game slated for the afternoon. Jesus’s words are instructional: “I have come to light a fire on the earth…Do... Continue Reading →
History and The Hidden Stories of Valiant Women in the Catholic Church
The Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism sponsors a Triennial Conference on the History of Women Religious at its home, Notre Dame University. The conference highlights women religious and their contributions to the American Catholic church history. The theme for this 13th Triennial Conference was Lives and Archives. Some friends of mine who have attended the... Continue Reading →
Lamentation On a Holy Place
“They ask their mothers, ‘Where is the cereal?’ In vain, As they faint away like the wounded In the streets of the city, And breathe their last In their mothers’ arms.” (Lamentations 2:12) The other morning, I woke to the news reported from a decimated hospital in Gaza. The doctor being interviewed in Gaza, Dr. Nicholas... Continue Reading →
When the Cracks on the Wall Become Beautiful…
Photo Credit: Montreal Museum of Fine Art (Before I begin this post, I have to celebrate this blog which posted its 300th publication last week. I forgot to mention it at that time. It's been three hundred weeks, never missing a Monday morning, since ‘in-things-charity’ has appeared. I pray it continues, and I welcome your ideas for... Continue Reading →
Saying Goodbye to a Revered Place of Learning
Goodbyes are never easy. We all know this because we all experience goodbyes throughout life. I've been pondering a coming goodbye in my life, one of a treasured place of higher learning that sent me into the world with a youthful eagerness to apply what I learned but also to enlarge that learning constantly for the... Continue Reading →
When a Nation and a World Loses Two Remarkable Theologians
Photo Credit: The New York Times On June 25, just a week ago, we lost Walter Brueggemann, an American theologian and well-known scholar of the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures. A few weeks before Brueggemann’s death, the respected minister-turned journalist, Bill Moyers died. Both men were in their early nineties. Both were Southerners. Both wielded a... Continue Reading →
Kindland, Ohio, Encourages Kindness Again and Again and…
Photo credit: Pixabay.com I first mentioned Kindland to my readers about a year or so ago. Kindland is headquartered in Mayfield Heights, Ohio just outside of Cleveland. The word is determined from a word formula: Kind (ness) + cleve (Land). It stems from the Values in Action Foundation which fosters values education in local schools in most states in... Continue Reading →
Reflection on a Small Town and its Demonstration
Hudson, Ohio is a town of some 22,000 residents and 7,225 households. It sits in the northern part of Summit County and was once owned by the State of Connecticut as part of that State’s ‘Western Reserve,’ land which Connecticut had annexed for expansion. Thus, this swath of land—which includes a section of Cleveland, some 20... Continue Reading →
Stopping by the Woods on a Summer Day
Photo credit: Alamy Over the years, my dogs and I have had many experiences on our daily walks, especially when we get into the nearby park woods. I know these woods and the park quite well but that is not ok with the nuns with whom I live. They are convinced that the Boston Strangler... Continue Reading →