Sister Joan Chittier on Differences

“Of two possibilities,” my mother loved to tell me, “choose always the third.”  She is a Benedictine nun.  I found the words of Sister Joan Chittier in a collection of writings on community titled Called to Community: The Life Jesus Wants for His People.  I have been carrying it around for a couple of months […]

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The doors of the church are open

“The doors of the church are open.”  This reminder needs to scroll below news reports of border walls constructed to protect against the “alien invasion” of our neighbor.  Because there are no illegal human beings, no one smuggled from the mind of God to earth and  our humanity requires no paperwork.  Because “the earth is […]

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Segregated Sundays: Questioning Community

“Community life is martyrdom by fire: it means the daily sacrifice of all of our strength and all our rights, all the claims we commonly make on life and assume to be justified.  In the symbol of fire, the individual logs burn away so that, united, its glowing flames send out warmth and light and […]

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The Jesus Community

“All who believed were together and had all things in common…” |Acts 2.44, NRSV These past few weeks, I, along with my Young Adult Sunday School class, have been in conversation about what Christian community looks like– not in appearance but application.  We don’t just want to talk about it; we want to experience it.  […]

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Christian discipleship: Pledging allegiance in America

During my junior year of high school, I couldn’t bring myself to say the Pledge of Allegiance.  I had been following the footnotes on African American history for awhile now as the history unit only addressed slavery and a few key leaders from the Civil Rights Movement.  The end read more like “to be continued” because there was no happily […]

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