When, as is true today, the richest 10 percent own 85 percent of the world’s wealth and the poorest 50 percent live off the crumbs of 1 percent of the total global wealth, you’ve created a market where slavery will thrive.
The Hungry Spirit
No one could stop Troy Davis' execution -- despite his apparent innocence.
My "life plan" -- at age 23 -- was to own little and to move where the Spirit led.
Last week the body of a young woman was found near my house. She was 17 years old. She'd been murdered. The garbage men reported finding her in a supercan in the alley.
It's often good to have a donkey with you when you pray. They provide a natural antidote to excessive piety. Take my recent retreat day at the Jonah House Catholic Worker community in Baltimore. Since 1992, the members of Jonah House have served as caretakers for a 20-acre Catholic cemetery that had been abandoned since the 1980s. Bit by bit the community is reclaiming the graveyard from the underbrush and overgrowth. It’s bordered by the Emanuel Tire Co. reclamation plant, a Section-8 housing complex, and the Maryland National Guard.
On All Saints Day I visited Jonah House to quietly pray the litany of the saints while surrounded by that "great cloud of witnesses"—both living and dead. It was a stunning autumn morning. Sunlight filtered through the red oaks. However, while walking the quarter-mile track around the graves and headstones, I was unceremoniously shoved from behind—hard.
This was my introduction to Vinnie the 3-year-old donkey. Despite the name, Vinnie actually is female. (The president of the St. Peter's Cemetery Foundation demanded that the next animal adopted into the community be named after him. What can you do?) And she's very strong. After I completed a few more circuits of the prayer walk—with Vinnie doing heavy prodding and me jabbing back hard between "amens"—we reached a rapprochement. I walked with a handful of grass in my left hand and Vinnie sauntered easily beside me, nibbling as we went. I felt like St. Francis. A victorious achievement in sacred cross-species communion.
"For God so loved the world ..." Lately John 3:16 won't leave me alone. It hovers above my shoulder as I read The Washington Post. Really, God? You love this world?
The nice vendor who sells aromatic oils in front of Speedy Liquor on 14th Street got stabbed the other day. Word on the street is he “got sliced with a machete.”
There are two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle, declared Abraham Lincoln in 1858: “the common right of humanity and the d
Sister Linda Fuselier was my first-grade teacher. It was 1969 at St. Ignatius Catholic School in Sacramento, California.
In July, Pope Benedict wrote you a love letter. Like all love letters, it’s worth savoring.
It’s summer here in the northern climes—and summer means the swimming pool.
On Jan. 20, the United States of America inaugurates its first African-American president and first Catholic vice president.
The great wheel of the Christian liturgical year is turning once again.