Newspaper Columns

The Heart of Religion

Yesterday I read a short reflection in Plough magazine about a woman who, according to the author, "was a neighbor...to every person who crossed her path." This woman's example impressed on me the idea that the sources of one's devotion--religious doctrine, methods of prayer and meditation, forms of worship, theological convictions--are peripheral to the work of love to which all human beings are called. One implication of this idea is that if my particular form of devotion is not making me a better neighbor (or parent or partner or friend or community member), then it is not worth pursuing. I am reminded of Jesus's Parable of the Good Samaritan , narrated in the Gospel of Luke. Part of the point of that parable is that the good Samaritan was a Samaritan , and not a Jew. The source of his devotion, his religious milieu, differed greatly from that of Jesus and his listeners. Yet Jesus insisted that this religious outsider grasped the heart of religion more clearly...

A Sabbath Day

I am thinking of the mulberries we picked today, nearly black knobby fruits, their juice spilling so easily from thin skins. I held a branch down while you picked them double-fisted, dropping them into the empty bottle where they crashed, spurting tiny jets of juice. The girls ate them by the handful, stuffing the dark sweet berries into their small mouths, purple smears like bruises blooming on their hands, legs, cheeks. We had hoped for ice cream but were foiled, and returning from that failed trip we found the trees, dangling their fruit in offering. We ate, and it was good. It was very good.

Cultural vs. Divine Love

I heard a short sermon once in which the preacher said something to the effect that eternal life was equivalent to knowing God. It brought to mind what John says in his first epistle to the early Christian church: the proof that we know God is that we love, and love of God is best demonstrated in love for others (I John 4:7-12; 19-21). My takeaway from all this was: eternal life = knowing God = loving God = loving others. I wrote the preacher after the service to share my thoughts. He agreed with my equation and added an important caveat. Since we are all of us creatures of our culture, he said, we tend to understand love the way our culture presents it, which doesn’t necessarily jibe with the reality of the divine love that Jesus--or, I would add, the Buddha, or Sri Ramakrishna, or Swami Ramdas, or Peace Pilgrim--embodied. Because of these competing and often contradictory concepts of love, it is essential that we maintain a healthy self-criticism and not blithely assume that what w...

The Mundane Way

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