It was in Alaska, right before the first Gulf War, that I first realized how music can “teach us how to hear the world differently,” as jazz critic Jed Rasula once said. I was in the Air Force “Gateway to the West” jazz band and my unit was temporarily deployed to Alaska, waiting anxiously...

After I graduated from college, I worked for Planned Parenthood for several years. Most days, I walked through protestors to get to work. They usually carried crosses and said things like, "Jesus will forgive you if you repent for your work." It turned out that the most revolutionary thing I did...

A former South African paramilitary commander looks across his dining room table into the interviewer's camera. He is in his early sixties, overweight, with short gray hair. He wears glasses and a polo shirt. It's late morning. He explains: "We were at war. We believed that if the Blacks were...

Moses was a rancher. Long before he became a famous Biblical patriarch who led his people to freedom from slavery, he was a simple rancher. And this simple rancher was tending his flock on the side of a mountain one day circa 1527 BCE, when he came upon a small forest fire—a burning bush. He was...

It has been a not-so-quiet week in Lake Wobegon! On Monday, I found that, apparently over a long period of time, a large sum of money was taken from me. What I thought I had safely saved toward some of my future dreams was gone! Have any of you ever been robbed? Do you remember how it felt to be...

Readings 1: The Gospel of Mark, Chapter 14, verses 3-91 While he was at Bethany, in the house of Simon the Leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came in with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head....

For if they are evil and we are not, if that's how we see things, then we are committing the same kind of error which led to this tragedy. That's the problem of evil. Not so much that it exists — in that it's really just a fact of life, or a force of nature. The problem of evil, as I see it, is...

A child I know, when asked this week whether she would answer the call of her elementary school principal to wear red, white and blue clothes on Thursday, was in a quandary. She put down the crayon with which she was painstakingly trying to squeeze the words Peace is Possible onto the white bars...

“I wondered about what I espoused as a pacifist and as a lover of life. As a Unitarian Universalist I dug for answers. But I had no answers. I still felt scared, horrified, hurt, angry, and shocked.”— Tom Capo How has this attack on our safe and secure country affected us? When a catastrophe...

Once or twice a generation comes a tragedy so immense that our whole nation comes to a stop and some new day of infamy becomes ingrained upon our memory and calendars. Such a date now becomes September 11th. We fixate on the horror; and then fear, anger, and a kind of helpless despair follow, but...

One of my favorite television shows is the "Third Watch." This series uses an ensemble cast of police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians to tell the story of life on the streets of New York City. Some characters like Doc, an EMT, are strong, steady, and reliable....

I invite you to reach out and make contact with the person next to you, a hand on shoulder, hand in hand, arm in arm, arm around, that we might feel our human connection at this dreadful time of mourning. And I ask you to be silent with me in remembrance of those who died on Tuesday, Sept. 11, in...

...Our spiritual connection to the food we eat has...been harmed by a modern culture in which over-processed foods are so ubiquitous that we have ceased to think about foods in their whole forms any more. ...Michael Pollan writes, “Try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother...

It’s really complicated honey. I’m only now understanding it myself. We weren’t really thinking about it like you and your friends do. It’s not that we didn’t care about how it would impact you; we weren’t really thinking about you at all. Oh that’s sounds terrible, I’ll say. I...

Tomatoes are arguably the most consumed fruit or vegetable in our country....28% of Americans eat a meal every day that contains at least one tomato. It is estimated that every American eats about 29 pounds of fresh tomatoes a year and an additional 73 pounds processed in tomato sauces, ketchup,...

...[H]ow we eat is not an isolated issue. While we would like to think, and often do think, with our independent human personalities, that what we eat is our own business, the truth is that what I eat, what you eat, has further reaching consequences than merely staying alive and being healthy. In...

A meat eater comes up to a vegan: “Did you hear about the new study saying vegans are more likely to go blind? I guess it’s because you don’t get the proper nutrition.” The vegan replied, “Nah, it’s just from reading all of those tiny ingredient lists.” Vegans (vegetarians who don’t...

Working to feed the hungry and obtain adequate food for poor people in our society has long been central to my own justice and service work. When I was in high school, I spent many weekends volunteering with a group called Youth Service Opportunities Project....

A while ago my friend told me that his son had come home from school with a new put-down expression. “That is sooo gay.” My friend explained to his son that perhaps he didn’t want to say that—after all, he lived in a family with two daddies—“gay” as a put-down just didn’t seem the...

My friend Sue has a son with autism who is now 19 years old. When Adam was younger (8–13) and when they would go to the grocery store, he would inevitably make a scene because he would want his parents to buy something he couldn’t have. This would be no ordinary scene of power play and wielding...