Does the Earth feel pain? Can it groan and cry out to God? Can the earth curse us for our crimes? It would seem so, and not just because ecologists, moralists, and Pope Francis are saying so. Scripture itself seems to say so. There are some very revealing lines in the exchange between Cain and…
God is erotically charged and the world is achingly amorous, hence they caress each other in mutual attraction and filiation. So, in reality, the law of gravity and the gifts of the Holy Spirit have one and the same aim” Jewish philosopher Martin Buber made that assertion, and while it seems to perfectly echo the…
In his book The Second Mountain, David Brooks suggests that a key to sustaining fidelity in any vocation is to build a structure of behavior for those moments when love falters. He’s right. Anybody who has made a commitment to be faithful for the long haul inside a marriage, a friendship, a faith community or…
What’s right and what’s wrong? We fight a lot over moral issues, often with a self-assured righteousness. And mostly we fall into that same self-righteousness whenever we argue about sin. What constitutes a sin and what makes for a serious sin? Different Christian denominations and different schools of thought within them lean on various kinds…
Looking at our world today, what frightens and unsettles me more than the threat of the Covid-19 virus, more than the growing inequality between the rich and the poor, more than the dangers of climate change, and even more than the bitter hatred that now separates us from each other, is our loss of any…
On October 4, the feast of St Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis released a new encyclical entitled, Fratelli Tutti – On Fraternity and Social Friendship. It can appear a rather depressing read because of its searing realism, except it plays the long game of Christian hope. Fratelli Tutti lays out reasons why there’s so much…
One size doesn’t fit everyone. This isn’t just true for clothing, it’s also true for spirituality. Our challenges in life change as we age. Spirituality hasn’t always been fully sensitive to this. True, we’ve always had tailored instruction and activities for children, young people and for people who are raising children, carrying a job, and…
We tend to be naïve about evil, at least as to what it looks like in everyday life. Our picture of evil has been falsely shaped by images taken from mythology, religious cults, and from books and movies that portray evil as personified in sinister spiritual forces. Demons haunt houses, appear at séances, are summoned…
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam ultimately all believe in the same God. Interestingly, too, in the popular mind they also all tend to conceive of God in the same way, namely, as male, celibate and not being particularly happy. Well, the gender of God is not something we can ever conceptualise. God is neither male or…
The excusable doesn’t need to be excused and the inexcusable cannot be excused. Michael Buckley wrote those words and they contain an important challenge. We’re forever trying to make excuses for things we need not make excuses for and are forever trying to excuse the inexcusable. Neither is necessary. Or helpful. We can learn a…