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Last night was our community meal. We often sing Happy Birthday to people. Last night we sang happy birthday to ourselves as Americans. We also sang Take Me Home, Country Roads - fun even if we couldn't sing it very well and needed the words to the verses. We could belt it out when it came to the refrain. We all seem to get both teary and joyful about being taken home to some ideal place. Our little community meal is the best thing we have going to address where America n

“Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer them with love.” — Mahatma Gandhi It happened at our simple and popular community dinner Thursday night. The Seventh Day Adventists served their signature vegetarian “haystacks.” Usually it’s an easy-going, if a little rowdy, environment. That’s how these things often begin—not in lecture halls or debates, but at long tables where people come carrying their fully human selves. John had sat down with a young woman and her

“Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict.” — Dorothy Thompson, journalist and amazing woman (check her out) There are moments in history when the air feels electrically charged. We sense fracture lines widening — in politics, in our own communities, sometimes even around our own dinner tables. And in such moments, even people of faith are tempted toward two extremes: retreat (into private piety), or lunge into

“Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening.”— Parker J. Palmer For many years, my father did not like Santa. Nor December. Not even the Christmas season. He was a bit of a Grinch. But not because his heart was two sizes too small. It was something different. He loved Jesus with a steady, serious devotion. He was a minister. He believed Christmas mattered. And because it mattered so much, he felt protective of it. Anything that felt like a distraction

How, exactly, do we resolve dilemmas that tempt us to choose either this or that and instead hold the tension long enough to let a “third...

And when you looked to this part of the world, grandmothers are considered to be the custodians of local culture and wisdom. And they are...

Instead of asking "what's the matter with you?" ask patients "what matters to you?" Dr. Sam Everington, Founding Social Prescribing...

“Imbalanced systems, whether internal or external, will tend to polarize.” ― Richard C. Schwartz, Internal Family Systems Therapy “Parts...

“We’re all going to die, all of us. What a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t.” -Charles Bukowski Maybe...

There is no 'them' and 'us.' There is only us. Father Gregory Boyle When a system is far from equilibrium small islands of coherence in...

"You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the...

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies...Abraham Lincoln. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not...

Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. Adlai Stevenson II, Fifth...

“The practice of spirituality is a way of looking at a world where you're not alone.” — Rick Rubin, author of The Creative Act: A Way of...

“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, first black woman in congress A...

There is definitely openness to others' suffering that is dealt not with distress but with compassion. Matthieu Ricard A couple of months...

"The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real." Victor Hugo If you want a little psychological...

"An invisible crisis plagues America today. It's responsible for more sickness, suffering, and death than almost anything else. It is...

If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even...

"We are each other’s harvest. we are each other's business. we are each other's magnitude and bond." —Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), First...