Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,Nobody knows my sorrow.Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,Nobody knows but Jesus.Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,Glory hallelujah! According to James Cone in The Cross and the Lynching Tree, spirituals like “Nobody Knows,” sung by African Americans throughout their time in slavery and especially during the horrific lynching period of …
The August doldrums, defined as a time of low spirits or a feeling of depression, are here. I seem to be experiencing this as I listen to the continual and increasingly reactive rhetoric of our president. The unending campaign coverage (knowing the first primaries and caucuses are months away). The continued restrictions on immigrants and on women’s health …
Summer is heating up, as is the political name-calling from the White House. Regardless of where you stand on the policies being addressed by the Democrats (and especially the newly elected younger members), the recent tweets by President Donald Trump sank lower than I could have ever imagined. Unable to contain himself from entering the …
Editor’s note: Global Sisters Report is focusing on the efforts of sisters to end human trafficking as Talitha Kum, the international anti-trafficking network of religious, marks its 10th anniversary and launches its Nuns Healing Hearts campaign. The special series will run periodically through September, when Talitha Kum will hold its first general assembly. Since its …
It is hard for me to stop seeing the Notre Dame Cathedral in flames. This magnificent work of human imagination and skill is the icon of the worldview and religious belief system that has shaped so many of us. Like the separation of Earth from heaven and hell, the sacred and secular needed to …
Listen … You hear it at first very faintly. The chirp that signals the birds are returning, having escaped the cold of a Midwest winter. Not yet dawn, the conversation continues to get louder among the treetops. Once in a while, when I am lucky, an alcove outside my window is the chosen spot for …
In the book Friday Black, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah tells the story of “The Finkelstein 5,” in which the main character, Emmanuel, describes “dialing down his blackness” when he leaves the sanctuary of his own home and enters the dominant white world. On a scale from one to 10, Emmanuel tries to set his behavior, tone of …
Not since 1945 has Valentines’ Day and Ash Wednesday fallen on the same day. I found myself intrigued by this. First, I remembered from my childhood how eager I was to see how many valentines I would receive and from whom and the weighty decision as to whom I would ask, “Would you be my …
The Christmas season is full of feelings and memories, some delightful and some not so much. At a time in our world when there is so much happening that brings sorrow to our hearts, it is important to pause and to contemplate the everyday incarnations that appear in our lives. Memories… Matthew’s Gospel begins with …
On a recent trip to New York City, I met a young woman. Let’s call her Daisy. We were waiting for the M60 bus, which would take us from LaGuardia Airport to the West Side of Manhattan in about the same time as a cab — and for much less money. As we boarded the …
In the mid-’80s Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death, which explored how media affects public discourse. He made the observation that before the telegraph, people found out about tragedies, fires or illness by word of mouth. They felt empowered because they were responding to local situations. They could express their compassion concretely and immediately. Too little …
The events in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month brought to mind the lyrics of a song in “South Pacific” by Rogers and Hammerstein. It is a song that isn’t always on the list of top tunes of that musical. For those of you who may not remember the song, it is sung by a U.S. …
