“When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For …
A scooter jolts over a distant curb and peels off. As I hurry to see what it's fleeing, a man steps into view with an enormous red stain on his shirt. "Dear God, let that not be blood." In the minute it takes to reach him I change my mind three times on whether it's …
On April 3, the United States banned the export of personal protective gear, stating that our own supply was too important to ship out during the crisis. A few days earlier, India banned exports of essential medications including hydroxychloroquine due to manufacturing shortages. Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria as well as autoimmune disorders. There …
Keanon Lowe, a young high school football coach, demonstrated the beauty of fighting violence with love as well as anyone I've ever seen. Lowe served as a security guard at Parkrose High School to supplement his coaching duties. One morning he was responding to a teacher's report of a missing student when 19-year-old Angel Granados-Diaz …
Love; it will not betray you Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free Be more like the man you were made to be There is a design, an alignment, a cry Of my heart to see The beauty of love as it was made to be "Ah," said the lawyer, wanting to win …
Alia passed away on Monday morning at 11:30am. The last time I saw her was the Wednesday before, when I violated the lockdown to give her sisters their salaries and a little extra for Alia's medicine and other needs. She was asleep so I was just in and out. The last time I had spoken …
People collapsing unable to breathe. Hospitals stretched past their limits of space and manpower. Life-and-death decisions over who gets a ventilator and who does not. In the worst-hit countries hundreds of people are dying every day. The West has not experienced this in our lifetime. But here it is familiar. In September I shared Alia's …
I've never posted a video, but there's a first time for everything. More firsts than usual in these strange days. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPIWQE1Gi9A Last night we had been on local lockdown since Sunday when the prime minister ordered a complete national lockdown of 21 days. The order claims we cannot leave our home, though later clarifications …
For several months I have been in the grips of a minor depression. The causes were mostly external and easy to identify. Of course even simple, "external" causes for depression are rooted in the jumbled mess of mind and soul and body and spirit that is engaged with the world and our God. Faith has …
Christmas! It marked one year since we started teaching at the little slum under the bridge. I wanted to try something special for them. We ended up making our way over in the morning with a bag of gifts in one hand and Shakeenah doing her stern Santa impression in the other. It was a …
