Last week, I listened to an interview with the Most Rev. Hosam Elias Naoum, Archbishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem and Primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East. Yes, that title is complex—and his job is even more complex, especially these days. For example,...
Two weeks ago, I stated rather bluntly that life has been downright horrid for most people in most countries throughout human history. My point there was to help us realize what a privileged time and place we inhabit. As the war in the Holy Land drags on, I find...
Over the past few days, I’ve been posting pictures of the Holy Land on Instagram because we were there on pilgrimage one year ago. So much has changed in one brief year, and yet so much remains fundamentally the same. The callous hardness of war seems endemic...
Age-wise, I straddle the Baby Boomer/GenX line. I married a Boomer, yet many of my perspectives (and musical tastes!) are GenX in nature. This is relevant for my reflections today because I’ve realized in the past few weeks that there’s a “protective” Boomer bubble...
Last year, I posted on Halloween, pondering the frightening floods and fires caused by climate change. This year, human conflagrations are on my mind, especially in Ukraine and the Holy Land. Wars where uncaring leaders have made pawns of helpless civilians are much...
A few weeks ago, the daily meditation from SSJE’s “Brother Give Us a Word” caught and held my attention. The excerpt, from this sermon by Curtis Almquist, reads as follows: We don’t possess our own lives. We are stewards of the life that God has given us, and for...