From Rabbi David Wolpe (Time.com, March 21)
“Spirituality is an emotion. Religion is an obligation. Spirituality soothes. Religion mobilizes. Spirituality is satisfied with itself. Religion is dissatisfied with the world. Religions create aid organizations….[T]he largest U.S.-based international relief and development organization…is World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian group.”
Certainly, not the last word on the topic, but certainly something to think about…
July 4, 1776 – a new nation being forged in a revolutionary war, establishing an initial and fairly unsuccessful government under the Articles of Confederation, and finally via a difficult process establishing a constitutional government – 1788. With this the American experiment was truly born and a Constitution written – in a way the mission and vision statement for us as individuals, a family, and a society of people among a larger family of other nations. It shapes our identity as a people. Continue reading
I have been a Catholic all my life, and yet somehow Holy Week was not part of the landscape of my Catholicism growing up. Years later as an adult I was living in Northern Virginia and worshipping at a church out in a rural town northwest of Washington DC. The town was located in the rolling hills of the Catoctin – the first ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
One of the interesting currents in the tradition of the Church is the idea of the two Books. And by that I do not mean the Old and New Testaments. The two are the “Book of Nature” and the “Book of the Word” (a dual meaning referring to Christ and to the Holy Scriptures). In the beginning there was only need for the book of nature. As our hymns proclaim:
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the firmament proclaims the works of his hands
Day unto day pours forth speech;
night unto night whispers knowledge (Ps 19)
friarmusings 