City Called Heaven

Blessed are you, Lord of heaven and earth. In mercy for our fallen world you gave of yourself, your only Son, that all those who believe in him should not perish, but have new and everlasting life. We pray for our nation, and look to you for deliverace from all evil. Let us not despair, nor be deceived that vengeance is a solution. Help us to know that the urge to hurt, to dominate, to destroy is not only evil, but only breeds further ills. In Jesus the Christ, we see and follow your example to heal and not to harm, to accept rather than inflict suffering. We pray for all who run for elected office, especially Joseph and Donald. Watch over and protect those who seek positions of leadership, and all who participate in the political process, that your will for them and for us be done. Heal our nation, and disrupt the plans of all who seek to do violence. Let us instead seek the change of heart and mind that draw us closer to one another and to you, in the name of Jesus, our hope an...

The Star-Spangled Banner famously ends with a question. "O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?" It has ever been the question, and is pointedly so now. Some may hear this as a question about the flag: is it still flying? But it is more importantly a question about us, about this nation. Is this land still a home to the free and the courageous? Is this the land where all are equal under the law, where we believe that everyone deserves basic decency, and which is still seeking a more perfect union? The cult of Trump/MAGA, the insurrectionists and those proclaiming retribution, have a very bleak view of our present, and an awful vision for our future. They know how to tear down, but not how to build up. On the last day of the Constitutional Convention, September 18, 1787, Elizabeth Powell asked Benjamin Franklin, "Have we got a republic or a monarchy?" "A republic, if you can keep it....

Reminder Each March 23rd is another reminder a marker of another year you could not teach your students to read a year you could not see your daughters become women a year you could not tell them &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp how you love them, how proud you are of them. Another sorrowful year you could not say that you left them too soon, &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp and did not leave their father soon enough. Another year marking, like a stone in the prairie earth, the silence of coroner, clergy, and community, because "it was too terrible to think about." Another year with the loss too terrible to live with. Yet we do. We live. And we remember you. We remember your mothering care for children, students, &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp and yes, for your husband. We remember your voice, singing "How Great Thou Art" for all to hear. We remember that even this day, you would speak with prophet's voice, &nbsp&nbs...

I was saddened at the news about O.J. Simpson's death. Not so much, really, at his death. That, after all, comes for all of us, and was inevitable. But I saw a short clip on the news, of Mr. Simpson on February 9th denying he was in hospice care ("Hospice? No, I'm not needing any hospice"), and then another of him two days later saying his health was good, and he was just about over his "challenges."* Now maybe he wasn't in hospice. And I know very well the inclination to look on the bright side, especially when the "other side" seems unthinkable. But I also know the cancer of denial, and the fear of being honest, with self and others, about truths we just don't want to face. I am sad that Mr. Simpson avoided, apparently to the end, some of the most important truths about his life. He lived off his greatness as a footbal player, which was certainly true. I remember as a child watching him on the college field, where he was a cut abo...

One of the most personal moments in the Passion story is when “At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’?“ Mark ( 15:34 ) and Matthew ( 27:46 ), believed to be the earlier written gospels, both cite these as Jesus' only words from the cross. Interpreters of the story have long wondered how to understand this verse. To whom is Jesus speaking? Does this one sentence convey Jesus’ sense of abandonment by God? Or are we to understand this opening verse of Psalm 22 as a means of quoting the entire psalm? Either way, I think, is a good way of hearing Jesus. By most all evidence, God is not coming to the rescue. The end is near, and the end is certain. Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God seems to have been killed by the powers of domination. There will be no conquest for this soon-to-be lifeless Messiah. I can identify with those moments of desolation, where there is no help, no...

My prayers at 9/11 On the morning of September 11, 2001, somewhere between sleeping and wakening, I think I heard a low flying jet above me at 121st Street and Broadway. When I awoke and left my dorm room, Trevor said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I went ahead to my first class of the new semester, on Aggression.*&nbsp I was there when the north tower fell, and the word came that classes were cancelled. Over the next few years, I was exposed to a lot of prayer. I remember the noon chapel service that day, and words of scripture,. And I especially remember John McGuckin in his cassock, standing off to the side in a corner of the chapel with prayerbook in hand, offering a silent witness of prayer while others spoke and sang. When there was no need for blood at St. Luke’s Roosevelt, I went downtown to NYU Chapel, where I had just finished my internship, and arrived just as the priest was leaving after a very hard day. Hassan, our Muslim security guard, graci...

Nineteen years is not that long ago in the grand scheme of things. But a lot has changed in the world. One thing that persists is grief. There are too many more losses. The mourning for 9/11 is not concluded, and more tragedy has come to the world. It is important to remember what has happened. If we do not notice the devastations around us, what will we pay attention to? And if we notice only one tragedy, we are frozen in time, blind, deaf, and numb to the world we live in. Because of the confluence of circumstances, 9/11 is probably the most memorialized single event in history. If you were more than two or three years old and living in the U.S., 9/11 was part of your life. And it was a moment in time where we had the world's sympathy and help. This past Labor Day, Lisa and I visited the Harborview 9/11 Memorial Park in Bayonne. It holds the Tear of Grief memorial, a gift from the Russian people (officially named "To the Struggle Against World Terrorism")....