This day begins the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The theme: “You shall love the Lord your God … and your neighbor as yourself” from Luke 10:27 answers the question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” How am I assured to have life with God beyond this life? Jesus’ simple (yet not so simple) answer was to say: Do what’s written in the law: Love God with all of who you are, and your neighbor like you love yourself, and you will live. I often wonder about the “as you love yourself” command. Does that mean that we don’t love ourselves because there are so many hurting and suffering people in the world? People to whom we do not show mercy and kindness? Read more »
December 12, 2023
Minute for Mission: Ecumenical Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins
This day begins the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The theme: “You shall love the Lord your God … and your neighbor as yourself” from Luke 10:27 answers the question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” How am I assured to have life with God beyond this life? Jesus’ simple (yet not so simple) answer was to say: Do what’s written in the law: Love God with all of who you are, and your neighbor like you love yourself, and you will live. I often wonder about the “as you love yourself” command. Does that mean that we don’t love ourselves because there are so many hurting and suffering people in the world? People to whom we do not show mercy and kindness? Read more »
“The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love, we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.” — bell hooks (Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations, 1994) 
Raquel Willis, a transgender woman who wrote “The Risk it Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation,” quoted for a crowd gathered online and in person for the Westminster Town Hall Forum last week this snippet from Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye”: “I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year. This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.” 
La Ofrenda de Gozo de Navidad ayuda al alumnado de Menaul a fortalecerse en mente, cuerpo y espíritu por Emily Enders Odom LOUISVILLE – Si la vida de fe es… 
If the life of faith is like running a race, Mikayla Rose Sierra is leading the field. 
A draft of the new commitments out of COP28 climate summit will not be enough on their own to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), as the UN climate conference in Dubai headed into the final phase this week. 
David French, a decorated military veteran and former litigator who’s now a New York Times columnist and, last week, the McClendon Scholar at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., borrows from the prophet Micah for his three commandments for Christians in politics. 
The University of Dubuque Theological Seminary received a $500,000 grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. in continued support of the seminary’s Clergy Coaching in Community and Context initiative, which launched in January 2019 thanks to a $936,102 grant from the endowment. 
Just like those wise pilgrims from the East who followed the star to Bethlehem only to return home by another way, Carla Louca and Susannah LeMay took some unexpected detours to find purpose and meaning.