May 17 2016
It has been months since I posted any thoughts on this site—months since I’ve written anything. Much has happened in the past couple of years that kept me away, and I will tell you in a few minutes, but let me start with something else. Last Saturday, on NPR’s “This American Life,” David Rakoff described …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-this-american-life/
Jul 20 2015
My parents are among the few best people I know. Inseparable—it’ll be five decades this year—they found each other and created a warm, safe, and joyful family for their children, and they taught us by their very example everything I value about life: how to love unconditionally and how to show love; that faith in …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-what-my-faith-is-good-for/
Nov 25 2014
Last week, I was part of an Interfaith Thanksgiving Service. I am a choir director at a Catholic parish, which is a member of a local interfaith association, and this service is something we do every year around Thanksgiving. It was a beautiful thing: churches of many denominations came together—Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Nazarene, and more—and …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-desecrating-church/
Oct 07 2014
A few weeks ago I went to a discernment retreat, the theme of which was “A Cup of Your Life.” A Cup of Life, right beside the Bread of Life, is a deep-running symbol in Christianity, and I need not explain to you where it comes from. At the mention of the word, we envision …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-being-cup/
Sep 16 2014
Some topics are so difficult, so treacherous and painful, that even notorious provocateurs like me navigate them trepidatiously, rarely, and noting with care who is listening. In my life, and the life of my family, Israel is such a topic. Oh, we think about it. We read about it constantly – nearly every day – …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-the-treacherous-question-of-israel/
Aug 12 2014
This I am writing at someone’s request—a person I know well and love, who recently told me that her life had had no impact beyond, perhaps, having produced her children. She seems to have given into this thought, and so it is on her children’s achievements that she now pins all her hopes for making …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-tracks-in-the-snow/
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Jul 13 2014
Continued from “Living prophethood. Part I: a fire shut up in my bones.” I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-living-prophethood-part-2/
Jul 12 2014
To Bonnie Thurston, a beautiful hermit, a tremendous theologian, and a thought-bending poet—for reminding me of the things I must say, and for saying things better than I could. You are one of God’s better prophets. The world is glorious. It is brimming with beauty and flowing in peace, it is soaked, it is …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-living-prophethood-part-1/
Jun 17 2014
Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed that easily. —Dorothy Day Another reflection read at the morning prayer sparks an inner dialogue in me – and here I go again, arguing with the author. Last time it was the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, who might still turn out …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-loving-despite/
Aug 04 2014
On whence loaves and fishes come.
August 4, 2014
Last Sunday’s gospel was one of the best known of Jesus’s miracles, one that has crossed the boundary between religious and popular discourse and inspired discussion on compassion and charity as much as the meaning of Sacrament, on a holistic approach to the person—body and soul—as much as the malleability of natural laws. It is …
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