Mary Magdalene: Peering into the darkness

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 story of women who peered into the darkness, found their souls transformed, and changed history. Mary, the mother of Jesus, saw...

Read MoreRead More

Crossing Boundaries: Awkward all Around

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 is oddly cranky about the whole thing, at least in the beginning. (Note: The Canaanite woman to which Matthew refers is...

Read MoreRead More

Women of Holy Week: Mary of Bethany

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 of listening. And it’s not just a gift for him --for through her endeavor, we learn how profoundly active real listening...

Read MoreRead More

Mary Magdalene: True, bold and loyal

"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 he have slogged through the streets of Jerusalem, perhaps winding up at Peter’s house? Would he have made his way to...

Read MoreRead More

Lent Three: Loving Leonard

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 that he went into Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston in 1918, thirty long miles away, and "didn’t come out." Best...

Read MoreRead More