Mark's Blog

They came into the city through separate gates, almost at the same time. The first was a procession that demonstrated power: Pontius Pilate’s power, backed by all the forces of the Roman Empire. The second procession was smaller, feeble by comparison, and it...

“Personal racism has gone down”, a wise colleague told me recently, “but institutional racism has gone up.” This is both good and bad news.The good news is that over the decades of my lifetime more and more people have become increasingly sensitive to the issues of...

“The secret to white privilege is that if you don’t want to hear something, you don’t have to,”  my mentor Ed Rodman said in a video retrospective:  “A Prophet Among Us”...

I was about six strokes from the finish of a 100 yard butterfly race in an age-group competition this past weekend when my arms gave out.  The last two strokes looked like I was drowning. I could barely get my arms out of the water.  Fifty-five years ago I was a...

Where’s the empathy?  As yet another message, order, and policy change comes blasting out of the White House, accompanied by fraudulent statements and outright lies, I keep asking –  and many of us are wondering -- where is the empathy for those who have been fired,...

How can we say yes when we are pummeled with so many nos?  No to immigration, no to Ukraine, no to federal workers, no to climate care, no to the teaching of racial history, no to trans people, no to anything that has to do with...

This Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, I am hosting an hour-long noon vigil at a prominent intersection in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.  Several people have said they will join me.  We will be holding two signs:  one that says, “What does the Lord require of you?” and the other,...

Like it or not, we are beholden to the production/consumption system.  Some years ago I read that Americans receive something on the order of a thousand messages a day, from some electronic device, enticing us to purchase certain medications, buy this car, fly to this...

Truth is for sale.  As directives and orders and policy statements continue to rain down on the country – and indeed across the ocean to Europe and beyond -- the thread that emerges is that truth is a commodity that gets bought, sold and traded in the marketplace. ...