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Listening to the Gospel story of the Good Samaritan, I was struck by the translation’s repetitive phrase that people, on seeing the person in need of help, “crossed the street.”  I began to reflect on what is happening in our country and what we are hearing that creates fear or indifference in us, so much

I always liked the feast of Pentecost. Chapter 2 of Acts describes it so well. I can hear “what sounded like a violent, rushing wind from heaven; the noise filling the entire house” where the people were gathered. I can see that tongue of fire first appearing “then separating and coming to rest on the

When I heard of Pope Francis’ death, I teared up, and as I read his Easter message, I thought, “Here was a holy person.” As I said that, I remembered a paper I wrote for a theology class as a postulant, the first year of entering religious life, that focused on what holy meant. The word holy derives from

On April 21, Pope Francis experienced the Easter joy of resurrection.  In his Easter message he wrote:  Today at last, the singing of the “alleluia” is heard passing from mouth to mouth, from heart to heart, and this makes the people of God throughout the world shed tears of joy. … Jesus is not in the

“Waste, fraud and abuse” is now a slogan and a smokescreen to justify any and all cuts to federal programs. Those words resonate with most of us because we want our tax dollars to go to efficient, transparent and useful programs. However, what we are witnessing are major cuts to international aid programs and increasing rhetoric about

 I suspect you’ve had the experience of feeling you were dreaming while sensing you were awake. It often takes a moment to figure out which it is, yet something emerges in your brain to tell you to hold onto it — whatever the “it” is. This happened to me not too long ago. As I

An arctic blast froze the landscape in a good part of the United States this mid-January.  Coupled with the darkness of the morning here in the Midwest, it invited hibernation. Stay asleep and wake up when spring thaws the frozen ground.  In the flurry of all the executive orders and the constant refrain of the

Clank, bump, crash, bang, clash. Like an alarm, these sounds wake me up every day at 6 a.m. Plaster, debris, rubbish, trash, fragments come tumbling down the chute attached to the fourth floor of the building undergoing reconstruction. This building is next to my house and the deconstruction site is directly across from my bedroom

My two longest ministries were the 15 years I spent in Washington, D.C., with Network, a national Catholic social justice lobby, and the years with the Institute for Communal Contemplation and Dialogue, which I founded in 2002. Faith and politics — for some, an oxymoron; for me, entangled realities needing each other. This brings me

When one engages in contemplation, one begins to “see” things anew. I have experienced this reality in different ways throughout the years, but recently I have physically experienced it quite dramatically. I had cataract surgery. As I came out of recovery, I was startled by the vividness and the clarity with which I could see