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Showing posts from April, 2014

Finding God in Crises

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  Google Image I’m reading a novel by Jodi Picoult called The Pact. It’s about a boy and girl who grow up as neighbors, are inseparable from childhood and become teenaged sweethearts. The girl begins feeling smothered by the relationship and, seeing no way to avoid disappointing the boy, his parents and her parents – who were also best friends - she becomes desperate to the point of taking her own life. She enlists the boy to help her shoot herself and he becomes the principle suspect in what authorities believe to have been a homicide, not a suicide. The families are torn apart and inconsolable. They become enemies. The book does a good job exploring the dreadful world of teen suicide and its effects on families. It’s hard to imagine losing a son or daughter to suicide. Often accompanied by the bitterness of guilt and anger, it must be among the most devastating events that can occur in one’s life. Last week, I mentioned Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wa

Faith and Intellectual Honesty

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Google Image   “There are no atheists in foxholes,” says a maxim ascribed to the famous war correspondent, Ernie Pyle. As you may recall, much of World War I and some of World War II was fought in “foxholes” – holes dug by soldiers from which to fire their weapons and protect themselves from incoming fire. That was before supersonic fighter jets and drones, a time when war was still up-close and personal. The maxim exaggerates, of course. There undoubtedly are some atheists in foxholes, but the idea is that when in a situation so horrifying like that of a soldier in a foxhole, people overcome with fear suspend doubt in a desperate hope that God will save them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a long-time hero of mine, commented on this phenomenon in his “Letters and Papers from Prison,” a book I highly recommend. A Lutheran minister and theologian executed by the Nazis in 1945, he lamented the quality of conversions among fellow prisoners who feared torture and execution. He worried

Free to be You

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Google Image For those of you who haven’t seen it, Portlandia is an IFC Production Co. TV comedy that pokes not-so-gentle fun at the stereotypical trendiness and political correctness of the residents of that Oregon city. A scene in one segment shows the star couple trying to buy a phone in a cell-phone store. The clerk asks the couple’s preference among dozens of plans, dozens of types and styles of phones, then several styles of sunglasses that the store is offering “free” to new buyers. He presents a dizzying number of choices and insists the couple consider each carefully. Don’t even think about popping in and out for a phone. The scene dramatizes the annoying number of choices with which we’re presented in buying stuff today. Coincidentally, I recently heard a TED Conference presentation on the subject of freedom of choice by psychologist and author, Barry Schwartz. Having to pick among so many choices, he says, sometimes results in paralysis – the inability

Forgiveness in a Field

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Google Image It was Ash Wednesday – the day that begins Lent for many Christians – about 1972. I was a priest in Bolivia and went to a nearby village to hear confessions. The community was on the shores of Lake Titicaca . On the border between Bolivia and Peru , Titicaca is billed as the “highest navigable lake in the world.” During about half the year there are practically no clouds and the lake is extremely blue, contrasting with the snow-capped mountains in the background. When I arrived, I found that the community had already gathered in a field fronting the village, the men in their cloth pants, heavy wool sweaters or old suit coats and felt hats, the women in their colorful layers of long skirts, blousy shirts and bowler hats. About the time I arrived, I noticed the 50 or 60 people gathered there were forming a wide circle in the field. Then I witnessed something extraordinary. One by one, each person went to his/her knees in front of the person next to him/her and