Hopeful Thinking

    This may come as a shock to you but that list of ten rules given to Moses around 3,000 years ago were not technically commandments, per se. They were utterances. At least that’s what the original Hebrew words meant. Of course one could guess that it if came from God, even a mild suggestion is probably worth serious consideration. The “Ten Commandments” as a term, however, is not the fully appropriate translation of the actual Hebrew words used in the Old Testament, aseret hedevarim . It means the ‘ten words’ or ‘ten utterances.’ Even the Greek and Latin did not call them commandments, but ‘sayings.’ That’s important to remember. At some point in history someone decided to present these important suggestions as demands. It appears that it was in the moment of its translation into English, but I invite correction. Suffice it to say we have not been commanded by anyone to do anything. We have been given sacred words as encouragements, not threats. Advice. Hope.    ...

    The Islamic midday call to prayer rings on my phone every day when the sun reaches it’s highest point in the sky. Yes, there’s an app for that. Today on January 21 it will be at 11:59 am. It is the Islamic call to prayer for the entire Muslim world. It is a beautiful Arabic chant calling the faithful to their third of five prayers for the day. “Haiya ‘Alas-salah!  Haiya ‘Alal-falah! Allahuu Akbar! Laa ilaaha Illal-Laah! (Come to prayer! Come to success! God is Most Great! There is no God but God.)     I am not a Muslim, however. I am a Christian. Yet, at midday every day I turn and face toward the east at the same time as my Muslim brothers and sister do and pray with them. To pray when they pray, beside them, in solidarity with them. I pray my own prayers for peace in the Middle East while they offer their Dhuhr prayers. Muslims are not terrorists. Terrorists are not true Muslims. Just like the early Crusaders and the leaders of the Spanish Inquisition wer...

The "Placebo Effect" is a medical term for an effect produced by medication which the patient believes will occur. In other words, if someone gives you a sugar pill, and you truly believe it will cure your cold, the chances are likely it will actually help. In one study people were given placebos and told they were a stimulant. Their heart rate, blood pressure and reaction speeds increased as if they had actually been administered a genuine stimulant. The opposite occurred when they were told they were being given a sleep aid. We've heard things like this before. We call it "mind over matter" but is that just something we say to brush aside the deep implications of recognizing that belief actually does matter to our general well-being? At what point will we start to integrate into our daily behavior the bumper stickers of wisdom we feed regularly ourselves? There is plenty of science to back up our notions that thought alone makes an impact on our bodies....

Greetings and Happy New Year! This being my first column I thought I’d write about something nice and simple like the Apocalypse. I love to study word history and meanings, etymology especially. Apocalypse is an interesting one. Of course we connect it with the so-called end of the world. But in the words of the rock band REM, perhaps it’s more like the end of the world as we know it. Not incidentally, sales of that song went up 62% the week the world was predicted by the Mayans to end in December 2012. We have a morbid fascination with the end of the world. Religion has had much to say on the subject of global annihilation. Some use it with great skill. But it in many ways that thinking is a conspiracy. Our cultural understanding of the End Times has been encouraged to think of itself as a destruction into nothingness. But there is little to theologically support this. All prophetic readings describe a recalibration, an end to the old ways of doing things. Not an end of all things, ...

The following is the formal proposal to Andover Newton Theological School requesting that this journey count toward an international travel requirement for both my Master of Divinity as well as a Master of Arts in Global Interreligious Leadership.   Journey dates: January 12-24, 2017 Sydney, Australia Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park The Big Island of Hawai’i Ithaca, New York The opioid crisis in my hometown of Fitchburg, as well as the rest of the commonwealth of Massachusetts has reached epidemic proportions. It was not my expectation to undertake this issue in ministry. But my Andover Newton education has taught me to seek what is truly there, not just what I expect to find. Fitchburg is one of only 36 communities in Massachusetts with a methadone clinic. The tired, poor, and hungry have been drawn here. But no one is serving them. Fitchburg has allowed the existence of a clinic, but failed in its duty to serve those whom a clinic would most likely draw. I b...