Caught Between Black Friday & Advent

To be quite frank, this year is the first year that I am observing the liturgical seasons.  As I come out of an evangelical Protestant denomination, I never participated in the celebration of church seasons.
Advent (derived from the Latin Adventus, meaning approaching) is the four-week season that anticipates Christmas and the coming of the Reign [...]

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Thanksgiving & Inter-Faith Dialogue

Today is a day to give thanks.
A brief history of the United States’ Thanksgiving tradition (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Grenada, Japan, Korea, Liberia, and Switzerland, among other countries have a national Thanksgiving holiday as well.):
The earliest thanksgiving occurred in Saint Augustine, Florida in 1565 (in 1541 a special Thanksgiving communion took place in modern day Texas). [...]

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International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

I must admit I wouldn’t have known that today, November 25th is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, had I not noticed it on a poster underground in the metro earlier this week.  I think it apropos to shed a little light on violence and women and how we as a [...]

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Signs of Growing Discontentment in a Failed State

Yesterday’s Shi’ite demonstration in Baghdad caught my attention due to the play on irony.  Therefore I decided to bring myself up to date concerning some of the numbers surrounding the Iraqi war.

This is a photo taken April 9th, 2003 during the toppling of an effigy of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
This photo [...]

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Pay it Backwards & Forwards

This week I was encouraged by an inspirational account coming out of Colorado.  In the midst of economic turmoil, uneasiness, and a milieu of not-knowing, it is great to know that there’s still more than coffee going around that warms people’s hearts.
Watch the video to see what I’m referring to:

I challenge [...]

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Rituals and Their Inherent Ethical Imports

This weekend I had the privelage of attending a Catholic funeral service.  It made me recall a monograph that I recently read by Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion.
It’s amazing how the collective consciouness of our ancestors past influence us to the degree that it permeates our very being.  [...]

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3.6 Million Children

The Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) has recently released a report detailing that 12.5% of all minors in the country are invoved in some sort of child labor.  Of those 12.5%, 45.2% work without pay.
That is 6-7 children/adolescents out of every 50 are working, and 3 out of 50 work with no [...]

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We Shall Overcome

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.
- Barack Obama, the night he became President Elect of the [...]

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