Tag: Christianity
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Forgiveness isn’t reconciliation
After you forgive someone, must you reconcile? I think the answer is, sometimes, no.
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The mechanics of forgiveness
What I’ve learned through painful experience about how to forgive so that I can be at peace.
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Unrightable
This week: essays I’ve written on forgiveness and reconciliation. This one is from 2008.
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Channel 16, Father Hesburgh, and the Prayer for Peace
Seen for the first time in 30 years: the recording of Father Hesburgh of Notre Dame reading the Prayer for Peace of St. Francis at WNDU-TV’s sign-on/sign-off.
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Photo: Church bus.
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The sacrifice of thanksgiving
As we head into our Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow, here’s a rerun from 2013 that seems extra relevant now. There’s always something wrong in our lives and in the world. Sometimes it threatens to crush our spirits. Can we pause for a minute to reflect on what’s good and right, and be grateful for it? I’m…
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A model for living the faith: Father McDyer and alleviating poverty in Glencolmcille
Christians get a bum rap these days as being bigoted and small minded. Perhaps it’s because some high-profile people who claim to follow Christ behave that way. Perhaps it’s because many people experienced a rule-based, condemning Christianity as children. But most Christians I know go quietly about their faith. The ones who live it out…
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Carrying the cross
It’s a Good Friday tradition at West Park Christian Church, on Indianapolis’s Near Westside, to carry the cross through the neighborhood. A hundred years ago, our brand-new neighborhood was a cheerful middle-class enclave. West Park Christian Church was new, too — and had hundreds of members. We have several panoramic photographs of our congregation through…
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Things I wish Christians would stop saying: “There’s a war on Christmas”
The Bible tells the story of Jesus’s birth twice: once in Matthew, once in Luke. But in neither telling, nor anywhere else in the New Testament, are we told to celebrate the event. It is our choice to do this. God does not command it. The closest the New Testament comes to telling us to…
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For eternity
I baptized my older son on Sunday. His mom and I did, actually. We belong to churches that baptize only those who confess belief. And in our branch of Christianity, administering sacraments is not limited to any special clergy class. Our interpretation of the Bible tells us that any believer can do such things as we are…