Last week, I spent a brief time on spring break with a small group of Duke students, Duke religious leaders and community members, who were helping with ongoing recovery efforts from Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina.
An important day in the life of the Christian liturgical calendar is Ash Wednesday, which is this Wednesday, March 5. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, which is the forty-day journey “in the wilderness” leading up to Easter.
Although humility is our very texture as humans, it ironically doesn’t come naturally.
Breath can be knocked out of you for good. You may not realize its value until it’s gone, especially when it is the last breath of a loved one in hospice or in a plane crash. Sometimes breath expires due to natural causes, while other times, the violence of kneeing or choking causes a person to say, "I can’t breathe."
On this King Day, there is one lesson from Thurman’s life that may be enlightening at a time in history when there appears to be pervasive estrangement among the citizens of the United States.
So often, the headline news spotlights start-up companies where the excitement is in the beginning of a new venture. What doesn’t get much attention at all is the end. Doesn’t it matter how we end, too?
Difference or diversity, even religiously or faith-wise, is embraced as a reality of the world of which Duke is a part.
With so much having already been said — on all sides — about tomorrow’s election, I am taking my cue for this column from the Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama.
What King and others teach about, and model, is the intersection of the spiritual and political realms. The spiritual is political and the political is spiritual. Again, this isn’t about political partisanship. It is about engaging in society in meaningful ways, rather than attempting to escape or ignore it.
For the times in which we live, lament is on-time speech. If we remember all of the lives taken by international wars and natural disasters, it is time to lament.
