Mark's Blog

When we were kids, we occasionally played a game of chicken on our bikes.  Two of us would ride toward each other – as fast as we could, and the one who veered off at the last minute was identified – no, ridiculed, as a chicken.  A real wuss.  A designation no one...

It was two a.m. when I was awakened by a loud conversation taking place in the next campsite at a state campground in southern Vermont.  After fifteen minutes of being forced to listen to my neighbors argue about various issues in their relationship, I decided to pay...

I cut across the edge of my next-door neighbor’s newly seeded front lawn, on my way to cross the street to see a friend.  I was about nine years old.  About twenty feet into my trespass, the father of the family charged out of his house:  “If you don’t get off my...

Bardo is a Tibetan Buddhist term.  It refers to the space between birth and rebirth, a space marked by vulnerability, in that one does know for certain what is coming next.  It can also be a time for growth.   I often liken bardo to the period of time when lobsters...

“No refuge could save the hireling and slave…”  A poetic phrase, embedded in perhaps the most well-known tune in America:  The Star-Spangled Banner.  We know the tune and have memorized the words.  We sing it before ball games, at the openings of town meetings, and at...

“He should resign”, I proclaimed – loudly, in the hallway of the church where I served.  It was a proclamation I issued with an energy and conviction that surprised me.  And which, no doubt, surprised the people who heard me.  I had been a strong supporter of...

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."  So wrote Julian of Norwich in the mid 14th century from her tiny cell which was attached to the Norwich Cathedral in England.  Yet for the city, and for Julian, all was not well.  The...

“While in college, his Jesuit formation did not stand up to intellectual scrutiny.”  So said the introduction to my college’s new president in the Alumni magazine published several decades ago.  Intellectual rigor won out over religious expression.  Again. By the time...

Survival of the fittest is an adage that has long been planted in our psyches.  The phrase emerged as a terse summary of Charles Darwin's findings that the strongest and fittest of a species have the best chance of passing their genes on to the next generation.  The...