“Be angry, but don’t sin. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” Ephesians 4:26 With what is going in our world today, it is sometimes hard to find someone who is giddy with happiness. Lots of long faces these days, divisiveness causing some of us to have an inordinate amount of anxiety and […]

Now more than ever, the only way to create true peace in this world is to cultivate it within yourself first.  Theory of Three Feet How do we each create a peaceful co-existence, and aren’t we more likely to seek peace with each other if we are first experiencing peace within ourselves? The three feet […]

As we begin celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landings (I was born a few weeks before Apollo 15), I think of all the amazing discoveries that have happened during my lifetime, including the 2015 visit by the robotic NASA spacecraft Dawn to the dwarf planet Ceres, located in the asteroid belt in solar […]

Immigrant parents. The refugee friend. The asylum-seeking loved one. The undocumented mentor. I find it quite strange how the divisiveness of our language changes the context of each phrase. In our political discourse today, it’s the adjective in these phrases that cause discomfort — based on a variety of different circumstances — and leads to […]

I do not recall politics and political engagement ever being discussed when I was growing up in the Ethiopian Catholic Church. In fact, it was more or less discouraged. However, while attending a Benedictine liberal arts college in Minnesota, I quickly became fascinated by the nuns on campus who strongly advocated for social justice. The […]

In my work, I’m asked to think about the future a lot – the future of the planet and the future of human relationships. We’ve been told that in 20 years – perhaps even less – we will begin to seriously feel the effects of climate change. Water could become scarce. Many crops could be […]

A few months ago, I heard someone tell me this, “You call yourself a priest, and you’re trying to have a conversation with these people about their beliefs in God. They’re all going to hell. They have only evil to offer you, father. You call yourself a priest?!” This conversation took place in Saint Cloud, […]

Audre Lorde once said: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” This is why we constantly have to learn the process of decolonizing our body and our tools. Living in a patriarchal, heteronormative, capitalist, Euro-centric and white supremacist world, we consciously and unconsciously learn oppressive ideas and behaviors that uphold dominant culture and […]