It was my third grade homeroom teacher in Tennessee who spoke about the great melting pot or salad mixer. Or maybe the Cub Scout trip to the local courtroom for a civics lesson toward a merit badge to see the judicial branch at work. It was my Sunday school teacher taking her confirmation class to […]
Tag: Christianity
On Migration
You may already know the first book of the Bible, Genesis, literally translates, “Beginnings.” The very next book, Exodus, means “mass migration.” We are made. And then, we go. And that story is repeated constantly throughout our holy texts. It’s Adam and Eve banished. It’s Abram’s journey out of his homeland. It’s Joseph sold into […]
Lead Us Not Into Penn Station
I’m not sure why, but lately, I’m hypersensitive to all the sounds that surround me. Maybe it’s because I’m used to a more rural environment that the sounds of the City are just that jarring to me. Maybe it’s because I’m living just next to the Garden State Parkway, which leaves in its wake a […]
Changing Trains
There’s this moment after leaving the Secaucus station where the train ducks into a tunnel, and the deeper into the dark it goes, the quicker the air pressure changes as if to suck the little sickle cell up the vein to the heart of Manhattan. From under the Hudson, all the passengers are adjusting their […]
Stories from Morocco, or Remembering My Encounter with the Muslim Faith
With all that’s been said about Islam lately, I thought I’d take a moment to republish something I wrote after returning from my time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco. This is a slightly edited version of a talk I gave to local churches and a local rotary club in Tennessee: Act 1. Arrival. […]
Breaking Out of the Box of Religion
I am someone who very much believes that God cannot be confined to the narratives and metaphors religion uses to describe the immanent divine. Whatever is sacred is so much grander than our meager language could ever do justice, and so I struggle even with the Bible or with the Church in its definitions of […]
What Advent Isn’t
I have this sneaky suspicion that most Christians don’t really understand what advent is. Or, rather, it’s not that they don’t get what it is so much as they don’t get what it isn’t. Everybody – Christian or not – can tell you that the “reason for the season” is more than Santa and gifts […]
Challenging Assumptions About the Modern Arab Myth: an Exploration of Moroccan Cultures and Traditions
Earlier this month, I gave a lecture to a group of United Methodist Men (and later to a local Rotary Club) about my experience with the Peace Corps. I am publishing that lecture here with only a few edits. I have also spliced in Wikipedia links every here and there. Please don’t regard those links […]
How the Gay Marriage Debate Reveals Negative Attitudes toward the Adopted
There’s an article on the front page of CNN today, an opinion piece, that defends traditional marriage. Because it would violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause to do so, the argument – like the one that will be heard before the Supreme Court soon – is void of any religious language. Even if conservative Christianity […]
Homesick for ‘murica, or from Glasses to Culture to Grieving
I’m homesick for America. Actually, this is a first in nearly two years. It seems that the closer I get to my close-of-service, the more I can taste America. Literally. Some Honey BBQ on a set of boneless chicken wings from Buffalo Wild Wings. A platter of my mother’s home-cooked lasagna. Perhaps a little San […]
