Previous slide
Next slide

SETTING THE INNER COMPASS

Reading poetry is one of the ways some of us nourish our faith, a way we set or reset our inner compass and stay focused on the big picture, on the spiritual journey. I know that is true for me. ‘Setting the Inner Compass’, is a column where I share poems that I find meaningful and hope others do as well. Last weekend I presented at a conference alongside an Imam, Rabbi and a Roman Catholic sister who is a Zen teacher. It was a wonderful event and a reminder that in this era where organized religion is in decline, spirituality is not. The room was filled with those who live spiritual lives, many in faith communities. My guess is that if asked to identify

More

Theology of Calvinball: Johnny the Walrus vs The Mysteries

Among the obsessions of Christian Nationalist circles today, the infamous question of Pontius Pilate arguably looms largest: What is truth? I was curious to know, too, so I posed the question to two very different picture books.

Both works are aimed not at children but at adults. The first, titled Johnny the Walrus and written by transphobic conservative talking head Matt Walsh, just crested its second anniversary. The second, The Mysteries, was created in a collaboration between Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson and caricaturist John Kascht and

More

The East Jerusalem Hills

It’s been a long day of touring East Jerusalem and getting a crash course on the ongoing silent transfer of Palestinians out of their lands. Our first day began with a tour led by an Israeli guide from The Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD), showing us the “matrix of control” that Israel has installed. Our bus drove from hilltop to hilltop and valley to valley in East Jerusalem, and we stopped in several places where we were shown how a slow strangulation is underway by Israeli settlements which swallow up more and more Palestinian land. Now 20 years old, Israel’s segregation wall snakes through these hills and valleys like an endless anaconda.

More

What can you do at a time such as this?

It is at times like these that we, the IPMN, are grateful for the PC(USA)’s longstanding history of prophetic witness to the Israel/Palestine crisis. Since  the 1948 Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland by the new state of Israel, the Presbyterian Church has been advocating for a just peace. The church has stood for the right to return for Palestinian refugees; an end to the occupation of the West Bank, east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip; and investment policies that ensure we do not profit from human rights abuses or the deadly use of weaponry. 

More