A friend recently asked me whether I believed in sin. It was a strange question for me to consider because the concept of “belief” as applied to “sin” already suggests that sin itself is not a self-evident or manifest reality. Considering the question, I had to answer that I didn’t actually believe in sin as an objective ontic something. Hurt, wounds, violence, injustice, suffering – these are objective realities that I have no trouble identifying. It was in naming the contrast or painful human experiences as sin with which I had the difficulty, since sin connotes moral, spiritual, intellectual, or volitional defect or evil. My intuition pushes back against this reading of the suffering the world reflects, at least in the microcosm, the imperfection of creatures, or perhaps better put, animals, and in a best case scenario, animals in process.
As I considered this question, I discerned that what is typically identified as sin is a byproduct of the natural limit of animal or creaturely life. This is to say, we are developmental, process-dependent, works of complex animal life. We are imperfect in the truest sense – that is, we are not completed beings but ongoing verbs with past tense helping verbs and “ing” endings. I have been trying; you have been growing; they have been seeking. In Christian language the term we use is “eschatological,” which connotes that the process has an end or a purpose. But, I am inclined to think this is just a more confident way of acknowledging the inevitable nature of worldly imperfection. Continue reading “A Lenten Reflection by Natalie Weaver”
During the January 21st Women’s March in New York City, I was inspired and delighted by so many of the signs women and men had crafted to express their opposition to the current disastrous regime in the United States: “Grab America Back,” “Support Your Mom,” “Sad!,” “Miss Uterus Strikes Back.” But one image stood out, mesmerizing me: that of a woman proudly wearing an American flag as hijab, with a message below—“We The People Are Greater Than Fear.” For several blocks as we made our way up Fifth Avenue, I walked beside a woman carrying that sign, and it became, for me, the most powerful symbol of the resistance we must all wage during the dark time ahead.
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Activism and Politics have had a complex relationship with Hollywood. Now more than ever actors, directors, and many more associated with the media industry are using their voices, their positions, and their money to causes, political parties, and movements. More and more groups and reports are being generated stating the power of positive representation and even of the necessity of forward progress. Yet, despite the pressure and call for action, there still is heavy resistance, which can be most clearly seen during award season. 
On the morning of January 20, 2017, the world watched Donald J. Trump stand on Capitol Hill for inauguration as the 45th president of the United States. He did not stand alone. Timothy Michael Dolan, Catholic cardinal and archbishop of New York, also stood, and he invoked the divine feminine as he opened the inaugural ceremony with a recitation of King Solomon’s prayer from the Book of Wisdom.
Ever since reading Elie Wiesel’s book, NIGHT, I’ve identified with Madame Schächter, one of eighty Jewish people corralled and hermetically sealed inside one of the cattle wagons on the rail journey to Auschwitz from a ghetto in Sighet. The text tells us, “Madame Schächter had gone out of her mind.” Initially she moaned, confused as to why she had been separated from her family. She soon grew hysterical. “Fire! I can see a fire! I can see a fire!” When her fellow prisoners looked out the window and saw no fire, they attempted to silence her. Nevertheless, she persisted with her cries. They soon tied her up, gagged, and hit her. As the train approached its destination (Birkenau, the reception center for Auschwitz), Madame Schächter screamed, “Jews, look! Look through the window! Flames! Look!” When the Jews looked through the window this time, they saw flames “gushing out of a tall chimney into the black sky.”
Did the ancient Celts believe in heaven and hell?
There are two types of authoritarians: those who jump out in front and say “follow me, only I can solve the problem”; the far greater number of authoritarian personalities are those who want to be told how to think, what to do, “this is daddy, I’ll take care of you.” Those are the people who are the followers and while some of those would like to be leaders themselves, most of them are just happy to follow, and they don’t want to ask questions, and they want to be told what to do and how to think. And that’s a very scary lot. —John Dean
Feminism and Religion 