The culture is upstream from politics. Like most words that matter, these are ones worth pondering, maybe even debating. Almost four years ago, just after the last national election in the United States, I wrote an essay born of this thesis, inviting 50 friends from throughout America and the world to respond. I asked them...
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Intractable. It is a hard word, and one we wish wasn’t. Whenever we find ourselves needing that word, we are in a miserable place. Sometimes marriages seem like that, and we can see no way other than more sorrow. And sometimes work bring us into messes that we groan over, knowing that there is only...
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Proximate justice, one more time. I walked into a familiar classroom this morning, one where I spent many hours over many years. And as I prepared to begin, I saw an essay I had written some years ago, “Making Peace with Proximate Justice” on the desks in the room filled with students from all over...
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In and through the sheltering and kind presence of God, Ruth is given the grace to devote herself fully to work. The scripture says, “So she came, and she has continued from early morning until now, except a short rest.” I do not think this passage alone justifies stringent versions of the Protestant Work ethic. ...
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“It always makes sense to tell the truth”– Vaclav Havel, 1936-2011. Hard as that is for each of us, it is only compounded when all of us lie. The personal is one thing, and it matters very much; the political is another: there the problem of lying is more horrible because more people are affected....
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When I was a boy, my grandfather and I spent summers buying cattle throughout Colorado. Mostly of course, he was the buyer, but there were moments when, with a certain twinkle in his eye, he would let me be the bidder, nudging me to know when to move my hand so that the auctioneer knew...
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