Went last night to an event where good friends who went on mission to the Middle East told the stories of internally displaced persons and refugees from the Syrian Civil War. They blog about some of their experiences here. Below is a recent sermon on the subject from a good friend of mine in Webster, MA. May God have mercy on us all and teach us how best to reach out and care for what happens on the other side of the world.
How many of us saw the picture of the little Syrian boy washed up on the shore in his attempt to flee into Greece? How about other images of migrants desperately trying to leave places of hopelessness for a better future in Europe or somewhere else? What would drive someone to risk not only their own life, but the lives of their children and entire family?
For many of us, we feel quite uncomfortable looking at these scenes of frantic migrants. If you look through the internet, we can see inspiring examples of people reaching out in compassion and care, while we also see how migrants, refugees, and immigrants can be bundled into a political football, and tossed around in quite a callous manner. Continue reading
“I mean, like, with culturally relevant teaching…[?]…” her high-pitched voice droned, lilting upwards at the end of the phrase as if everything said was more of a question than a statement. Was she really that unsure of what she was saying or was it a habit learned from an academy which no longer believed truth to be something definitive? I was sitting through yet another required teacher training seminar wondering if I was the only one in the room more interested in the message than in these interminable lectures on teaching methods. Yet this particular post-modern drill sergeant took the message/method dichotomy a step further than I had ever heard it taken. She delivered a conclusion to her talk that can only make sense to a brain thoroughly washed in ideology and completely abandoned by common sense: “It doesn’t matter what we teach our students…[?] as long as we teach them with the right method.” 
July 4/17, 2015
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Like Mendicant Monks... 