A few days after the presidential election, I attended a conference where I heard Rev. Lennox Yearwood speak about what he thought lay ahead. He noted that the left still thinks it’s fighting Jim Crow. “But we’re actually fighting his grandson, James R. Crow III,” he told the room. He went on to make the […]
Tag: religion
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Earth
Growing up in a Southern, progressive Christian church and going to seminary, we often made fun of the Jonathan Edwards’ style ‘fire and brimstone’ preachers throughout West Tennessee. Their vision of the future and the afterlife was dark and ominous. In hindsight, we should have taken their fiery spirit more seriously. We’re facing a future […]
Fear and Loneliness – and Hope
I oscillate these days between crippling fear and endless hope. It’s a strange dichotomy, actually. The fear is both very real and very fantastical. By that, I mean what I have an imagination for – climate collapse, the collapse of our democracy, economic collapse, the pending authoritarian threat and the very real damage it could […]
Seeking a Climate Revival
I was asked at a climate conference in Washington, D.C. recently to forgo my digital devices – no laptop, no phone, no watch. Given how bleak things are in this moment, and the fact that I had seen firsthand how frequently governments hack those they deem “dissidents” in the press freedom space – this layer […]
Wake People Up, Remind Them Who They Are
In the heart of the Hudson Valley’s sloping hills is an agroforestry project with a beautiful end goal: return to the land the plants and trees indigenous to it. Decades of invasive, endless growth have left the land with a lack of biodiversity. Slowly and surely, though, this diversity can be reintroduced. Even the pawpaw, […]
The sin of empathy
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, prelate of the Episcopal Church had the audacity to do something truly radical recently: she asked a president for mercy. Mercy is not necessarily entirely foreign to this particular president. He showed “mercy” to 1,500 men and women pardoned on his first day in office, some charged with violent crimes, for […]
To be silent, or not
This morning brought unsettling news. The Court of Appeals in the Philippines upheld the conviction for Nobel laureate Maria Ressa and her former colleague at Rappler, Rey Santos Jr., all but ensuring she could see as many as 100 years in prison on charges of criminal cyber libel. You read that right: if convicted on […]
Dealing with the Scary Stuff
A friend and colleague of mine who does human rights work alongside me mentioned recently that she went on vacation and left her work phone off the whole time, only to fear when she turned it back on she would learn someone she’d been in touch with had been murdered the night before. It wouldn’t […]
Beatles Mania
As long as I can remember, I’ve always been a Beatles fan. The first album (that wasn’t soundtrack music) anyone ever bought me was a Beatles album my sister got me for Christmas or a birthday one year. I must’ve been twelve or thirteen at the time. I already knew half the songs that played […]
A Responsible Media is a Critical Media
The New York Times ran a cover story today detailing a moment during the insurrection in which seven strangers worked together to attack Capitol Police officers. The profile on the insurrectionists, which the paper of record still refers to as Americans involved in a “riot,” as opposed to an attempted coup, is part of a […]
