To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here In 1942, a foreign army invaded and occupied American soil for the first time since the War of 1812. Japanese troops captured the Aleutian islands of Attu and Kiska, just off the coast of Alaska. An Allied force of some 35,000 Americans and Canadians were given the assignment of taking them… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here The Haskell Free Library and Opera House is one of the most interesting places on earth. The northern part of the building is in Stanstead, Quebec. The southern part is in Derby Line, Vermont. The building has two different phone numbers and mailing addresses, each of which represents a different country. That… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Franciscan priest and author Brennan Manning was fond of recounting a story about American G.I.s in France during World War 2. One of their number had been killed in action. They approached the priest in a local village and asked if they could bury their friend in the church cemetery…. Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here “An eye for and eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” Gandhi famously said that if we take that Old Testament dictum to its logical conclusion, the whole world will end up blind and toothless. The only hope for healing in our broken world is if two wounded parties decide not to hate each… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. In the movies, when one gentleman offends or insults another, they immediately “throw down.” I challenge you to a duel! And just like that, out come the swords or pistols or some other means of settling things, usually with fatal consequences. But that’s not how dueling happened in real life. According to historian Scott… Read more »
Zachary Taylor never voted in a U.S. presidential election until he was 64 years old. That’s when the career military officer cast a ballot for himself in the 1848 election that sent him to the White House as America’s 12th chief executive. But the record for a presidential candidate voting late in life for the first time is probably held by Nelson… Read more »
Even before the final shots of the Civil War, another great conflict had broken out between the North and the South. It was the battle of the cemeteries. Before 1864, there was no national cemetery in the United States. Few people imagined the need for such a place. But the monumental struggle between the Union and the Confederacy cost an… Read more »
Throughout Lent, we’re exploring the parables of Jesus – the two dozen or so stories that were his chief means of describing the reality of God’s rule on earth. Father Elias Chacour describes himself as a “Palestinian-Arab-Christian-Israeli.” At one time or another, as bishop of the Greek Catholic Church in northern Israel, he has needed to call on each of… Read more »
