(OPINION) If you ever get a wild hair to try something really spiritual, try this. Think of the people who’ve done you dirty. We tend to keep a long list somewhere in our heads of people who’ve royally messed us over, bad guys we’d love to see get theirs.
Read More(OPINION) Taking care of a very sick loved one by yourself can be so demanding that it’s difficult for folks who haven’t tried it to comprehend. A caregiver is an amateur trying to do the jobs of a whole squad of pros: nurse, mental health counselor, bookkeeper, maid, legal advocate.
Read More(OPINION) As I get older, I find my resolution for each new year is the same. I don’t need to make a list of resolutions. I just want one thing: Peace.
Read More(OPINION) I’ve long predicted that eventually scientists will identify a fundamentalist gene inherent in some people, just as some folks have biological predispositions toward intelligence, heart disease or tallness. Researchers will find this gene blocks its carriers from perceiving philosophical grays, much less a full-color spectrum. Such people have, in effect, spiritual color-blindness. They see everything in stark blacks and whites; they can’t help it.
Read More(OPINION) If you knew nothing about a woman who’s the subject of a Post profile, you might imagine she’s enjoyed every advantage — she’s pretty, young, White, popular. You might envy her. If you’re of a certain turn of mind, you might even resent her. And you’d be wrong.
Read More(OPINION) More than anything else, I seem to hear from people who grew up in evangelical Protestant churches, as I did. They were taught a rigid set of doctrines to which they were expected to adhere unquestioningly. Often, these folks tell me the faith they were baptized in hasn’t held up for them. They’ve become disillusioned. They’ve quit believing in God.
Read More(OPINION) As an abundance of odes to Rosalynn have reminded me, the Carters proved themselves Christians in the truest sense of the word, unlike so many Bible thumping politicians today. Before they reached the White House, while in it and across their post-presidential decades, they never used their faith as a cudgel with which to bludgeon or belittle their adversaries, but as a motivation for their innumerable good works.
Read More(OPINION) Choosing a life of thanksgiving doesn’t mean living in denial or developing toxic positivity. Just venture online to watch a few minutes of the gruesome images coming out of Israel and Gaza. You’ll quickly be disabused of the idea that this is the best of all possible worlds.
Read More(OPINION) An editor friend forwarded me an email he’d received. The original sender said he was reading articles about how intertwined Christians are these days with secular politics and found the subject very confusing. He suggested that somebody ought to explain how to identify a genuine Christian as opposed, I assume, to people only using faith to further their political agenda.
Read More(OPINION) There’s a key concept in Christianity called repentance. It’s probably common in other faiths as well. The word translated from the Greek of the original New Testament into English as “repent” or “repentance” is a compound term. It means, literally, “change your mind.” That’s it.
Read More(OPINION) I’m not sure why I’m bringing Job up again. Maybe it’s the war in the Middle East with its accompanying photos of mangled bodies and shell-shocked babies. Maybe it’s the local stories I’ve heard of fatal car wrecks and life-threatening cancers. Maybe it’s just the daily toll of age and oncoming frailty.
Read More(OPINION) It’s not in any way trivializing the ongoing horrors in the Middle East to point out that all of us are equally vulnerable to our own private apocalypses. What does good religion say to us at times such as this — and at all times? Plenty, actually.
Read More(OPINION) The Washington Post recently featured an unusually lengthy newspaper essay by Kate Cohen, a contributing columnist. Cohen’s takeaways are that religion is irrational, there are a lot more atheists out there than you’d imagine, that they should share their beliefs widely and that atheists make demonstrably better citizens than do the religious. But for me, Cohen’s essay is also misleading.
Read More(OPINION) As an artist and as a person of faith, Clara Maria Goldstein is difficult to pigeonhole. Raised as a Roman Catholic in her native Nicaragua, she moved to the United States with a 1 year-old daughter, Alejandra, in the 1980s at age 21.
Read More(OPINION) What I’ve retained about Sept. 15, 1973, is more a feeling than details of a game. It’s an impression. It’s an aura of happiness and relief. In Commonwealth Stadium, amid all the opening day hubbub, Dad and I seemed almost magically removed from our outside lives. In a desert of private unhappiness, we’d stumbled on an oasis: a place where a band played, people laughed and the hot dogs were tasty. Our tension eased.
Read More(OPINION) As one who’s prone to be anxious about — well, about nearly everything — I’ve spent a good deal of my life looking for ways to de-stress. So allow me to offer a few reminders about dealing with presidential indictments, global warming, nightmarish customer service, artificial intelligence, road rage, grouchy spouses and troublesome offspring — without imploding.
Read More(OPINION) A friend asked what I thought about the recent “dust up,” as she called it, at Pine Mountain Settlement School in Harlan County, Kentucky, deep in the Appalachian mountains. There, The Waymakers Collective turned a chapel into a “healing space,” decorating it “with pillows, mats, a table of aromatic oils and an ‘om’ symbol, which symbolizes the universe in the Hindu religion.”
Read More(OPINION) We never hear things exactly as they are. We hear thing as we are, through the presumptions and biases residing in our heads. We’re inclined to make others responsible for our angers, our hurts and our grudges. How do we become better listeners, really hearing instead of simply confirming our own preexisting blind spots and wounds?
Read More(OPINION) If you, like me, think faith in God and religious affiliation are generally good things for people, then you, like me, ought to feel unsettled by the findings of political scientist Ryan Burge. He argues that religious participation in the United States is now largely the domain of the educated and comfortable, rather than a buttress for those on the margins of society, who historically were the core audience for Christianity.
Read More(OPINION) I realized with a bit of a start that if my mom were still here she would have turned 90 on Aug. 6. Sad to say, she passed away in 2003. Here are some virtues she showed me, largely by living them, not by preaching them. Maybe they’ll speak to you, too:
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