Dharma Song
While reading Jospeh Goldstein’s One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism, I came across this “Dharma Song” by Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche. I think of so many friends at SLU who’ve done mindful walking, breathing, smiling, sitting,…
Category: Wisdom Traditions
Our Teachers
I came across the following passage on mothers of the disappeared from Daniel Berrigan’s Steadfastness of The Saints: A Journal of Peace and War in Central and North America, in which he writes about his visits…
Gospel Subversive
Even when they call us mad, When they call us subversives and communists And all the epithets they put on us, We know that we only preach The subversive witness of the Beatitudes, Which have…
Jesuit Values
The Jesuits clearly influenced me with their strict organization, their discipline, and their values. [p. 118] I believe that Christ was a great revolutionary. That’s what I believe. His entire doctrine was devoted to the…
The Buddha Smiles in Hell
A Reflection on Claude Anshin Thomas, At Hell’s Gate: A Soldier’s Journey from War to Peace. Shambhala Publications, 2004. In one of the most fascinating pieces I’ve read on the U.S. war in Iraq, the litany-esque,…
The Prophetic Voice (Accompaniment)
A Reflection on Rosalie G. Riegle, Dorothy Day: Portraits by Those Who Knew Her Convert to Catholicism, unapologetic pacifist, denizen of the Lower East Side, comforter of the poor, journalist by trade, and nay-sayer to secular…
Towards a Post-Civilizational Praxis
For Jim Flynn and Pat Geier A Reflection on John Dominic Crossan God & Empire: Jesus against Rome, Then and Now [2007] In the past few awful, maleficent years of the Bush Administration, a spate of books has appeared…
The Power of Example
for Michelle Conley For years in my Social Justice course at Saint Louis University, I assigned the 1993 paperback by Cao Ngoc Phuong entitled, Learning True Love: How I Learned & Practiced Social Change in Vietnam….
The Only Statement That Counts
for Yoshifugi In 1974 at an amazing conference was held at St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York. Christians and Jews gathered to confront the question, “Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era?” Catholic theologians…
Joyfully Together
One of the recommendations I have given some of my students who want to move in the direction of a deeper commitment to social justice after university studies is: Find and nurture a community. Without other…