
Peering into the darkness. Talking about it. It’s what women do. And at this time in history, when women are looking squarely into the darkness of sexual misconduct, rape, and gun violence, we in the religious life delve deep into the…
Peering into the darkness. Talking about it. It’s what women do. And at this time in history, when women are looking squarely into the darkness of sexual misconduct, rape, and gun violence, we in the religious life delve deep into the…
Ethnic boundaries: apparently even Jesus had trouble with them. Case in point: Sunday’s Gospel reading from Matthew 15:21-28. A woman from “the outside,” known as the Canaanite woman, spars with Jesus and convinces him to heal her daughter. And Jesus…
No human being in the New Testament — besides Jesus — listens better than Mary of Bethany. As we go deeper into Holy Week and come closer to the cross, consider the unmatched gift she gave him: the deep and profound gift…
“Jesus died and rose from the dead.” While not exactly a ho-hum expression, we often take it for granted. Think then, of the resurrection from another angle: What if no one had been there when Jesus walked out of that tomb? Would…
It seems that the world has been filled with purple this week in memory of Prince…but for those of us who love stories of women in the Bible, the color purple also belongs to Lydia. And Lydia comes up this…
My mother-in-law always grieved Leonard, her tall and handsome father. She was three when he died; he was twenty-eight. He was a millworker in the woolen mills of Lawrence: young and healthy one week and gone the next. Family history says…
Unlike most of the world, God does not throw away old people. Nor does God assign women to lesser or unimportant roles. A robust example of being valued–as a woman and an old person–is found in Luke 1. Here, the classic story…
For the better part of forty years, Mary didn’t do anything for me. And that sounds like something a loser would say: “Hey, Mary didn’t do anything for me…” Except, of course, she did something that no one has ever…