There is no denying that America’s slaveholding past still weighs heavily on the nation’s conscience. About 388,000 Africans in total were abducted from their homes and subjected to the horrors of the Middle Passage before being sold into bondage in North America. Through natural increase, the number of enslaved persons in this country reached 3.9 […]
What is the body?
She steps out of the shower, frigid. She stands in front of the fogged up mirror, slowly lifting a frail arm to wipe away the steam. She drops her towel, grabs her stomach and turns side to side, her hands touch protruding bone after bone, as finger meets rib with unsettling ease. Hot tears well […]
Living in a Secular Age
The term ‘secular’ has become almost synonymous with progress, Westernization, and democracy. It often stands in contrast to the religious, the traditional, or the authoritarian. It is a beacon of hope in a world tied down by its past superstitions and stains of ignorance. Secularity, it seems, is a very good thing indeed. But what […]
Light and Truth from a Hospice Bed
Light An aged priest limps down the aisle, clutching what looks like pure light in his hands. Golden sun-like rays have been welded around the outline of a single circle, surrounding a single piece of bread in the middle – the Host — and there, kneeling in the convent, I can hear words of the […]
America’s Infatuation with Sport Heroes
August 14th 1936, almost a year after the legislation of the Nuremberg Race Laws that set the legal framework for Jewish persecution, nine middle-class boys from the University of Washington sat anxiously in their boat on the Langer See towards the outskirts of Berlin.1 And just meters away, the prized German coxswain and his crew […]
Hope in the Midst of Hurt: A Critique of Between the World and Me
“The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.” -Psalm 103:6 As a preface to this article, I would like to comment on the topic of racial justice generally. I am a White man. More, I am a White man writing about a Black man’s experience with racism in America. I fully understand […]