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Election Year Musings

September 2020

Last year I granted an interview to the Church of Ireland Gazette, a magazine that was trying to interpret US politics for its Irish readers. In view of the coming election, I have revisited that interview, editing the discussion for American readers. The world seems to be becoming increasingly polarized and divided. We are living in a more uncertain world. Is there anything you think the Church needs to say or to be, in order to act with integrity in ...

Family Secrets

August 2020

I’ve been writing a memoir and, like most memoirs, it deals with family secrets. Unplanned pregnancies, abortions, suicides, addictions, extramarital affairs, prison time—often families don’t speak of such events because of shame. However, as this guest blog by David Bannon shows, repressed secrets exert a dark power even if they never get exposed. Perhaps that’s one reason the Bible treats human failings with such unflinching honesty? —Philip My daughter Jessica died of a fentanyl-laced heroin overdose in 2015. She ...

The Surprising Gift of Solitude

July 2020

For me, one scene captures the manifold tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic. A friend named Dan was already suffering from Lewy body dementia, a brain disorder that affects thinking and reasoning as well as muscle control. Once a college football hero, now Dan could no longer negotiate steps or even figure out how to sit in a chair. After several years of loving care, his wife reluctantly had to move him into a memory care facility, which she visited every ...

After the Protests and Riots, What?

June 2020

In Minneapolis, rioters protesting the killing of George Floyd damaged more than 570 buildings and burned 67 businesses to the ground, many of them minority-owned. In my city of Denver, rioters targeted a pedestrian mall near the state capitol, as well as museums and the public library, smashing windows, defacing statues, and spray-painting graffiti. I’m old enough to remember similar scenes from my former city, Chicago. A band of young radicals known as the Weathermen joined with Black Panthers and ...

Praying All the Way to the Bank

May 2020

As the statistics on illness and death due to COVID-19 keep rising, the economic statistics keep falling. In March the stock market lost more than $11 trillion in value, and has been yo-yoing ever since. While the more fortunate are mourning their dwindling retirement plans, the truly desperate have joined the 36 million Americans applying for unemployment benefits. How will they pay the rent or feed their families? While watching the news one day, I flashed back to another time ...

Blog Posts

Election Year Musings

Family Secrets

The Surprising Gift of Solitude

After the Protests and Riots, What?

Praying All the Way to the Bank