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Here I offer some basic guidance about how people of different faiths can engage with each other in meaningful and productive ways. This advice is the product of 36 years of interfaith work, culminating in my present job as Associate Dean of the Office of Religious Life at the University of Southern California.

O Dear One, we are overwhelmed with frustration with the impossibility of fully accepting this unacceptable death.

The people who want to make abortion illegal have just been “outed” for a profound inconsistency. Donald Trump, shooting from the hip, suggested that since abortion is murder, women who have abortions should be punished accordingly. The outcry from conservative culture warriors was immediate. Almost all anti-abortion campaigners oppose such criminalization, because they know that advocating for it would create a huge backlash against their efforts.

The right to choose whether or not to have an abortion is the mother of all rights. If you can’t be guaranteed the liberty to sort out something so intensely personal for yourself, what area of anybody’s life is secure from government intrusion? It is not a matter that can be put to a vote. God gave women sovereignty over their own bodies. So abortion is a matter to be decided solely by a woman through her God-given conscience.

“Mindfulness is “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.” … It could have been at the mouth of one of the shallow caves carved by Nature out of the limestone cliffs of Mount Quarantania, facing Jericho on the Jordan River and the Dead Sea to the southeast, that Jesus sat to gaze at forty dawns in the wilderness before he began his ministry. This 40-day season of Lent invites us to join Jesus in practicing mindfulness as he did in the desert.

Matthew: The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed
Martha: Which a woman hid in three measures of meal.

Taxes are the way that people of faith care for the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens, by funding our government’s social safety-net services. Charity through faith communities and other groups is a vital supplement, but no replacement, for the role we give our government in meeting critical human needs. For instance, Bread for the World, an evangelical Christian charity, estimates that the dollar value of all charitable food donations in the US adds up to only 6% of what the federal government spends on feeding hungry Americans through programs like EBT/Food Stamps and federally-subsidized school lunches.

In my own experience, the best thing I can do for my friends is to listen to them. If I’m doing too much of the talking, then I’m not adequately listening. And when I listen, I do best if I really listen: just be present in silence and give my friend my full, compassionate, truly interested attention. The fourth century Christian mystic, Gregory of Nyssa, said that “we consider becoming God’s friend the only thing worthy of honor and desire.” Mindful prayer is being God’s friend, and letting God be a friend to us: simply being, attentively, with each others’ being.

Voting is liturgical. It’s a ritual expression of love for others when we vote for candidates and for ballot propositions that help to assure the welfare of our vulnerable fellow citizens. Our votes are forms of tithes or offerings that deserve blessing or dedication in worship. By lifting up voting in worship, we take it to heart and commit ourselves to participate. With voter turnout in a steep decline in recent years, congregations are needed more than ever to make a difference. The time to plan election-related events in our churches is now!

The practice of creating Stations of the Cross for meditative reflection on the final hours of Jesus’ life is a very old one. To this day, many Catholic and other churches have gardens or sanctuaries in which the stations are situated.

Replace “slavery” with “global warming” and Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address in 1865 hits home not just in the ears but in the gut. Lincoln’s rhetoric still reaches into the soul of America and swells it with emotion and conviction. And integral to its impact is its use of Judeo-Christian language.

I’m here to give a version of this State of the Union that gives at least a hint of how things are going with this movement globally. And I do it to offer you spiritual encouragement and enrichment. Because understanding our religious identity feeds our spirituality. Knowing who we are in the realm of faith and spirituality helps us to express our religious experiences. And being able to express our spirituality helps us to experience it in our hearts. Language follows experience, but it also induces and inspires experience as well. It’s a feedback loop that helps us keep the faith and feel the presence of God.

Eggs won’t stick on my magic frying pans
Spots won’t grow on my wonder-creamed hands

  The word “God” in the English version of the Christian Bible is rendered in the Arabic version as “Allah”. But Allah and Allah are two different entities, according to evangelical Wheaton College, which recently suspended one …

We can hope that the standoff in Oregon ends with cool heads prevailing and no bloodshed. But the threat that Christian jihadism poses to America is very real. Our country is in danger at least as much from home-grown anti-government terrorism as is from the foreign sort.

What wisdom I have
Awakens me to my blindness.
I cannot see light itself:
What I know of light
Is only an alluring shadow
Of what it is and does.

Since American Muslims are being pressured to root out extremists in their midst, and to publicly denounce terrorism done in the name of their faith, Christians in America ought to do the same. We should do it …

On Jesus’ fifth birthday, living in Egypt, his parents announced that they were going on an outing. “We’ve got something to show you,” said Mary to Jesus.

At our Wednesday mindfulness meditation practice group here at USC, which is part of our Mindful.USC.edu initiative, I start our sessions with a very short introduction to the practice, and end the 30 minutes of silence with a time for the students and staff who attend to share about how their practice is going. At a recent session, I shared an observation that came to me while I was meditating. “It seems to me that mindfulness practice is a lot like National Public Radio.

Worship is a ‘receipt’ given to God in return for the divine gifts of life which we receive…. It is an artful response to our awe and wonderment at the miracle of creation which surrounds us…..

MICROAFFECTION: a subtle but endearing or comforting comment or action directed at others that is often unintentional or unconsciously affirms their worth and dignity, without any hint of condescension

O dear God, I love you!
I ache for you, my heart burns for you
and only you can quench this fire

Jealously is holy if it moves us to be better people. Jealousy is holy if it inspires one religious community to mimic the good things that other faith communities do.

At its best, Christianity is a vessel for carrying the most potent moments of our lives. At its best, the faith does not impose on us a dogma to recite or a doctrine to which we must give assent. Rather, at its best, it gives us a sanctuary in which we can contemplate the turning-points in our lives, become mindful of our emotions, and reflect on the meanings we find in our stories. Our religion gives us a language to use to express the significance of the events of our lives. Our religion is not prescriptive, but rather is a means for us to be descriptive about what matters to us, and why.

Lord, hear our prayers, those deep, unformed urgings that lead us into your presence.

Re: the Oregon mass shooting: “Harper-Mercer’s mother, Laurel Harper, shared her son’s passion for guns… I was so appalled by the Roseburg incident that I needed to deal with my despair by flying my fingers across my computer keyboard. This is the result – a spoof on the absurdity of owning guns for self-defense:

With heavy threads of green
And red, and white and blue,
I will embroider the border
Of Mexico and the United States.

(My office hosted a group of Tibetan monks, who made a mandala in our Fishbowl Room at the USC Office of Religious Life. I watched them create it over the course of a week, and then watched as they ritually destroyed it in an elaborate ceremony. As I watched them sweep their creation away, I wept for mother, who had died the week before. After 88 years of creating her life, it was swept away like the sand of the mandala.)

This book is an academic and exegetical critique that the ancient myths of Satan and Hell are no longer valid from a biblical review or from current science. The manuscript begins by looking at the nature of myths and concepts of evil gods and punishment in ancient Mesopotamian. It works systematically through early Hebrew myths of evil, life, death, and through Hebrew canon texts of hassatan (Satan) as one of God’s council and concept of death in Sheol

O Dear One, we strain forward to meet you now in the silence of prayer; we press ahead, reaching for you, and as we do we notice those things that create the tension we feel between us and you.

This week I tessered again, through a novel that left a deep impression on me when I was eleven or twelve years old: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1962). More than recalling the plot, I have always remembered the feeling I had while reading it: a sense of wonder, fascination, and warmth. All that came flooding back through me as I read it for the second time a few days ago.

earthsized waves ring gospel truth
in measures long as swells of surf
wide as air among redwood trees
a word or tune will catch the beat

I was shopping for a college to attend and my school counselor gave my name and address to Immaculate Heart College. Just old enough to realize my heart was not immaculate? How could this be the right college for a young leftish wannabe political activist Who spoke no Catholic?

“How does the Truth fare with thee?” Early Friends asked each other by way of greeting.

One of my favorite haunts is the Theology Room of the Ghost Ranch Library … There I sat, contemplating the nature of divinity, and the divinity of nature.

Because the earth is all around
The earth I cannot see
Because I use my eyes to look
My eyes are lost to me