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Showing posts from June, 2015

Finding Your Calm

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Google Image For many of us in the western world, a glut of obstacles impedes the search for God. In my view, they include indulgent prosperity, religious illiteracy, damaging sex, secularism and “busyness.” (As I’ve mentioned before in these blogs, secularism is not necessarily a bad thing. It does, however, fail to provide the social support for belief that was present in earlier ages.) Of all these obstacles – and there are undoubtedly many more I haven’t included – busyness is perhaps the most pernicious in its subtlety. In our culture, busyness may seem inevitable, even normal. However, it impedes the search for God on at least two levels: it leaves us with little time to pursue belief, and it robs us of the calm and thoughtfulness necessary to do so.   Why Are You Afraid? James Martin, S.J., in his book, “Jesus, A Pilgrimage,” uses the gospel story of the calming of the storm to illustrate the problem. As you may recall the story, Jesus and his disciples embark on

Good Old-fashioned Hate

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Google Image Years ago, a colleague at The Des Moines Register related what happened when he was covering members of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, KS, who were protesting something or other at the state capitol in Des Moines. I don’t recall the issue involved, but the signs and speeches of Westboro members against people whom they were protesting were vicious. Among the Westboro protesters, as I recall, was a boy of about 10 years old, son of one of the church’s leaders. When my colleague asked him if he thought protesting in such a way didn’t show disrespect toward others, the boy simply said, “F*** you!”   Westboro, which appears to seek out publicity like a heat-seeking missile seeks a target, recently picketed the funeral of Beau Biden, son of vice president Joe Biden, in Delaware. According to the confusing information on Westboro’s web site – whose address is godhatesfags.com – the protest was against the vice president for “ training Beau Biden to

Who’s In and Who’s Not?

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Google Image My admiration for Pope Francis is no secret to readers of this blog. So what’s his greatest contribution to the modern world? In my opinion, it’s his oft-quoted conviction that God is not just the God of Catholics, or even of Christians, but the God of EVERYONE. This may not seem like a big deal, but it’s a sea-change for religious leaders, especially Catholics. The focus of the church has been on “members,” who are considered to be “the Body of Christ,” a “Sacred People,” “a Chosen Race” – concepts that come from the Bible but have been used to justify exclusivity. Consequently, the vast majority of the church’s time and energy has been spent on members:   masses, services and sacraments, schools, visiting members in hospitals, preparing and delivering homilies. Very little time and energy has been spent reaching out to the “unchurched,” the indifferent, the marginalized, the unbelievers, all of whom were the focus of Jesus’ efforts. In public and private prayer

Who is Seeking Whom?

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Google Image Most of us grew up as Christians or Jews. We went to Mass, Sunday school or Hebrew School. We heard fantastic stories about Moses and Abraham, Peter, Paul and Jesus. At least in our early years, many of us wanted to “be like them,” to always love God and others. Then we grew up, and all of those stories and our reaction to them seemed childish. We learned that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were bogus. Surely God is, too. We may have also noticed that many adults don’t take religion seriously, so why should we? We may have learned in college that the world and all that is in it resulted from random natural selection, not from a seven-day creation spree by an invisible God. And we may have concluded that reason and faith are incompatible. So what about now? Is our indifference or hostility to faith due to an intellectual commitment to the truth or to some vague notion that those beliefs, experiences and aspirations of childhood are childish? Or is it simp