Skeptical Faith

Google Image (Due to a change in my schedule, Skeptical Faith will be published on Fridays instead of Thursdays beginning Oct. 24.) I was a latecomer to the notion of “woke,” not realizing until a couple of years ago that it had become a politically charged catch phrase for all things liberal. According to Wikipedia, woke is “derived from African American English used since the 1930s or earlier to refer to awareness of racial prejudice and discrimination…. The term acquired political connotations by the 1970s and … over time, came to be used to refer to a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism and denial of LGBTQ rights.” Now, it appears to be a term of derision used by the right to vilify the left. To me, it's all a bit juvenile and silly. Biblical The idea of being “awake, if not “woke,” is biblical, used in the New Testament to urge Jesus’ followers not to bury their heads in the sand but to see clearly what is going on in the world and to be ready for J...

Google Image If you regularly connect with social media – Facebook, Instagram, etc. – you’ll notice that they are filled with political messages from one side or another. Many are harsh; some are just plain mean. And many are aimed at people out of the mainstream – minorities, immigrants, the homeless, the poor. And they’re not coming from just one side of the issues that are generally categorized as Republican/Democrat or Liberal/Conservative. Many complaints against the “other side” that I’ve seen are either downright false, exaggerated or unproven. They often talk about the other side being “outraged” or “unhinged,” sometimes with language not suitable for a blog such as this. It’s a classic case of the end justifying the means. (I don’t want this blog to be viewed as “political,” but in the interest of truth, I believe our president is to a great extent responsible for this kind of language and vitriol. He’s providing the model for political language and action, making it seem ...

Google Image When you fall in love, you want to think of nothing else, or no one else, but your beloved. It can be close to an obsession. If you marry, as I did over 50 years ago, love eventually transforms. You don’t expect to be always aglow with emotion, to be feverish about it. Your conversations with the other aren’t always warm and interesting. You settle into a more enduring, calmer and, in my opinion, more authentic kind of love, in which you become accustomed to think about the other’s welfare at least as much as your own, close to a real “love of neighbor as yourself.” Oh, you still have those moments in which your heart melts for your beloved, but they are balanced by the joint, day-to-day tending to the needs of living. Married Love I think this understanding of married love, at least, is analogous to what may happen when we pray, or don’t pray. Says Ronald Rolheiser, priest and theologian, in his little book, Prayer, Our Deepest Longing: “We nurse a fantasy both a...