God,
Our Source and Ground of Being,
In you we live, move, and exist.

Most of us have gone quietly on saying how terrible it is and doing nothing. We (I) am all too comfortable in our (my) innocence and ignorance of the grim reality of the life of those oppressed. But the move is on. The age of innocence is over.

The inaugural poem of Amanda Gorman – at 22, the youngest inaugural poet laureate in U.S. history – lifted our spirits as it dazzled our imagination.  Indeed, as her lofty words filled the air at our nation’s capitol, hope was given a new face. 

Can prayers be narcissistic? A great many prayers are in the first person, like the laments in the Psalms. “God help me, rescue me, forgive me, heal me” are typical petitions in the first person. But praying for oneself can become narcissism when concern for oneself supersedes loving our neighbors. 

You can “walk” these stations by practicing one station per day, from March 20 through Good Friday, April 2 – or at any other time or manner during Lent (Ash Wednesday, February 17, until Easter Sunday, April 4).  

Jesus told the first apostles, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Does that mean we’re supposed to “catch people” for Jesus and convert them to Christianity?

The words of Amanda Gorman, Poet Laureate, from her moving poem during the inauguration of Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris as President and Vice-President of the United States of America.

The year of our Lord 2020 provided a perfect storm of agitation and opportunity. We wrestled our way through a contentious political season where we witnessed pillars of moral society abandoned or subverted to advance partisan agendas.

Don’t be distracted my friends. Take a deep breath and remember your inherent goodness.

A New Year is only magical when we shine light in the darkness, when we choose to bless the world. It isn’t time to wait for miracles to happen, for some ritual to chase away what bedevils us.

The promise of new technologies is huge but the risk of lapsing into a world dominated by the few who are wealthy while most are relegated to a peasant class similar to the Dark Ages is very real.

There is a unified field in the cosmos that holds everything together, and every discipline is a portal to it. Science calls it a field of fundamental forces and elementary particles. Religion calls it God and accepts it by faith as an impenetrable mystery.

If creation is in crisis, then our spirituality must directly engage this creation and articulate a spiritual framework that will allow us to relate to both the world and the crisis we face that is both life-giving and healthy.

Out of the mouths of babes comes either curiosity and wonder or doubt and defiance. On either extreme the truth that emerges is always a question: “Why?”

Jesus is, in fact, no longer the reason for the season. But the reason this is so extends far beyond the cultural and commercial contamination of a quaint old tale.

The awesome insight I wanted to share with you was “that the human brain has many times more connections than stars in our galaxy” [p126]. That’s an “aha” from the inside out, or rather, way, way beyond!

I have two points to make today. The first is very practical and the second is deeply philosophical.

One thing I fail to see addressed anywhere is the mayhem of blacks upon blacks in cities such as Chicago. Do black lives matter only when death is caused by a law enforcement officer?