The Care and Cure of Souls

In June 2023 I was invited by Bishop Mark Chironna to participate in The Issachar Initiative, a conference on “The Care and Cure of Souls.” The online conference brought together a multicultural, trans-generation group of pastoral leaders and academic scholars …
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Taking Responsibility for Daring to Accept Reality and Our Power to Change It

There is no question that we need to make fundamental changes and we need to make them fast. The incremental approach will not bring healing or civility, or return us to a sense of community. To think we can’t change the status of our poor, our sick, our prisoners, and develop racial unity (as our great religions instruct us to do) means our fear and regressive impulses are limiting our capacity for creativity, courage, and vision.

Taking Responsibility for Recapturing Our Challenge for a New Normal

We are the ones who need to step out of our comfort zones and reclaim the heart of our democracy, and the soul of our heritage. We need to be tough enough to follow the example of perseverance shown by the members of our revolution to change our government on the national level, the state level, the county level, and the city level—no matter if it takes six-and-a-half years as our original revolution did.

Taking Responsibility for Rage and Creativity

For any real creation, there must be a rage. It takes rage to break through the chrysalis of fear, pride, conventional thinking, our need for approval, or whatever is encapsulating us. Creativity requires the concentration of all our passion, our love, our anger, our rage, and our hatred—the concentration of all of these combined with our sensitivity and our thoughtfulness.

Taking Responsibility for the Reality That Our Democracy is Weak

As our democracy has weakened, we have become increasingly ruled by predators and fear. We are afraid of taking risks, of speaking out, of being criticized, of not being politically correct, of being confronted, of offending family, friends, neighbors, and of losing business. Have we become afraid of being free?

Taking Responsibility for Reclaiming the Heart of Our Democracy

Dear Reader, “Few are guilty but all are responsible,” the great religious scholar and leader Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote about the moral state of a people. As a people, we Americans are at a turning point in our history. …
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