General News

Here We Go Again

By |

A few months back, a segment on the “Daily Show with Trevor Noah” presented a kind of generic report after a mass shooting. The point was that mass shootings happen so often in the United States that all we have to do is to fill in the specific details of the event. Everything else would be the same. Some loner mentally disturbed individual– fill in the blank– took an assault weapon into a public place – fill in the blank – and killed and injured a number of people. – fill in the blank.

General News

Muhammad Ali is the Truth

By |

Muhammad Ali is the truth. Even though Ali laid his body down on Friday, June 3, 2016, a body that was fast and strong and weak and trembling, the essence, excellence, beauty, and truth of the man remains.
Muhammad Ali is the truth. His life tells us that to be excellent at anything, we have to put in the work. He started boxing when he was 12-years-old. He trained six days a week for more than twenty years. Joe Martin, the police officer who taught him how to box, and Angelo Dundee, his trainer for his entire boxing career, both agree that he was the hardest worker they ever trained. As a teenager, he ran to school rather than ride the bus. He asked his brother to throw rocks at him so he could work on his reflexes. He ran long distances in Miami to the point where the police contacted Dundee to confirm that Ali was a professional fighter in training.

General News

Reclaiming Words: Niggas, Bitches, and Queers

By |

WARNING: I will quote the original sources in this essay verbatim. Some people may find the words offensive. Reader discretion is advised. At the 2016 White House Correspondent’s Dinner, the last during the administration of Barack Obama, the first African-American president, comedian Larry Wilmore ended his presentation referring to the president as “my nigga.” His use of the word “nigga” reignited the discussion about when and where and how and by whom the word ought to be used or whether it ought to be used at all.

General News

Dear Speaker Ryan

By |

May 12, 2016
Dear Speaker Ryan,
On Thursday, May 12, you are scheduled to meet with Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States. According to reports in the media, the purpose of the meeting is for the two of you to get better acquainted so that you will feel comfortable enough with Mr. Trump that you will endorse his candidacy, unify the Republican Party, and win the presidency as well as down ballot races. I am writing to encourage you to withhold your endorsement. Please do not put party unity and the will-to-win the next election ahead of the good of the nation. You have put the party and the next election before the good of the people in the past.

General News

Prince

By |

There are not many singers whose songs captivate the imaginations of both me and my children. When we play Prince in the car, both my son and I sing along. The only time I saw Prince live in concert was with my daughter and her father. Prince broke down generational barriers with the power of his musical truth. His was a life and artistry of radical love.

General News

Merrick Garland, a Good and Decent Man

By |

He had me at tutoring elementary school children. Before President Obama’s official announcement that he would nominate Hon. Merrick Garland to the United States Supreme Court, the news had leaked, and cable news networks were already giving information about him. His is an impressive Curriculum Vitae. So, when the president began to give Garland’s credentials for the court, I had heard much of it before.

General News

One God: Dr Larycia Hawkins, Wheaton College, and Presidential Politics

By |

God is Love, the rest is commentary. This is an a priori presupposition born of faith. When I contemplate the simple sentence – God is Love – I contemplate the power and the mystery of a life force that defies words. We give God, this Divine Love, anthropomorphic qualities so that we can make God thinkable and speakable. We make God father, mother, friend so that we can wrap our minds around the concept that we are in relationship with a Love that existed before the beginning and will exist after the end, a Love that is as vast as the still expanding universe and as finite as a single grain of sand or a single drop of water, a Love that contains within itself all the laws of physics and mathematics and biology, a Love that loves us personally, knows our names, who understands the language of our laughter and of our tears.

General News

Unarmed Truth and Unconditional Love

By |

In his final State of the Union address, President Obama spoke of unarmed truth and unconditional love. I was happy to hear him utter in public the four-letter L word. We hear politicians speak about love of country, but we rarely hear them speak about unconditional love. Too often love of country translates into love of people in the country who are like ourselves. Too often it means disrespect, distrust, paranoia, and even hatred of the Other.

General News

Human Sacrifice and the Idolatry of the Gun

By |

“God turned into an idol requires the shedding of blood.” —Gustavo Gutierrez
When we survey human history and the various societies that practiced human sacrifice, ritual murder, for the sake of the propitiation of some god, we ask: what god required such? Then, we congratulate ourselves that human moral evolution has brought us to a moment when we no longer purposely kill one or thousands to please some divinity. I say: not so fast. In the United States, we commit what amounts to human sacrifice at the rate of almost 90 men, women, and children a day to the god of the gun.

General News

Four Santas

By |

I am late returning from the North Pole this year because Santa has been on the road. I am one of Santa’s helpers who come to the North Pole every year to help with the preparations for Santa’s Christmas Eve work. I help track and locate children who have moved since last Christmas, so I watch migration patterns closely. This year has been awful for so many children. One might think that the Syrian refugee crisis, the kidnapping and murder of children in Africa, and the immigration of unaccompanied children from Central America to the United States would not concern Santa, but it does.