Archive | character RSS feed for this section

Endurance

My friend Sally, a retired nurse practitioner, examined my sprained ankle today. She predicts it may take three months for it to heal. Yikes! I am impatient. However, I have no broken bones. And, my problem is minor. My problem is minor compared to the problems faced by the people in Ukraine, Turkey and Syria, […]

Read full story Comments Off on Endurance

Antisemitism

More than four in 10 Jews in the United States believe their status in this country is less secure that it was a year earlier, according to a  2023 survey by the American Jewish Committee. This is terrible. Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice President Harris, stresses: “Silence is not an option.”

Read full story Comments Off on Antisemitism

Truth

Sometimes, it is difficult to know what to believe. We hope Sojourner Truth was right when she said, “Truth is powerful and it prevails.”

Read full story Comments Off on Truth

Who is an American?

Cody Keenan, in his book  Grace—President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America, remembers when he told President Obama that Rudy Giuliani had said that the president doesn’t love this country. President Obama replied to his speechwriter: “Who gets to decide what it means to be an American? Who gets to be the […]

Read full story Comments Off on Who is an American?

Easy answers and half-truths

A friend sent me these words recently—from a Franciscan blessing for justice and peace. May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, hard hearts, half-truths and superficial relationships. May God bless youso that you may live from deep within your heartwhere God’s Spirit dwells. May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and […]

Read full story Comments Off on Easy answers and half-truths

Speak up

Don’t be quiet. Speak up. I’m going to let people know what I think. That’s my resolution #6. Amanda Gorman says, “Girls have spent so much of their lives being told to be seen and not heard.” –Joy

Read full story Comments Off on Speak up

We want more

When Nancy Pelosi joined the House in 1987, there were 12 Democratic women. “Now there are 90, and we want more,” Nancy said recently when resigned her leadership role. She, of course, was echoing Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Once when RBG was asked how many women were needed on the Supreme Court, she replied, “Nine.”

Read full story Comments Off on We want more

The power of small

Michelle Obama says it helps to focus on what you can control when you feel out of control. The things she could control during the pandemic and times of racial unrest and threats to democracy were her spools of yarn and knitting needles. She labels such thinking “power of small” in her new book The […]

Read full story Comments Off on The power of small

The truth

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off,” Gloria Steinem once said.

Read full story Comments Off on The truth

We must be friends

“We are not enemies, but friends,” Abraham Lincoln said in 1861. “We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

Read full story Comments Off on We must be friends