by Mark Beckwith | Jan 10, 2023 | Uncategorized
Like most of us, my first reaction upon hearing of a six-year-old boy shooting his teacher with a gun at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia, was outrage. How can a six-year-old get a gun? How does he know how to use it? How is he supervised? How...
by Mark Beckwith | Jan 3, 2023 | Uncategorized
As we turn the corner into a new year, many of us are drawing up some resolutions. Most resolutions tend to be either about exercise or diet, which may get some traction – for awhile, but usually end up losing out to the strain of three more months of winter. What is...
by Mark Beckwith | Dec 27, 2022 | Uncategorized
In 2009 journalist Bill Bishop wrote a compelling book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. He makes the case that over the past several decades people have been living, working, worshipping, recreating, and vacationing in...
by Mark Beckwith | Dec 21, 2022 | Uncategorized
When we get scared, we seek protection. And so many of us are scared – of increasing violence, of a precarious democracy, of growing polarization, of progressing climate change. And on and on – a veritable cascade of fear. One mode of protection for many, at least...
by Mark Beckwith | Dec 13, 2022 | Uncategorized
The people who walked in darkness… This past week I met many people who regularly walk in darkness. I attended a two-day Gun violence prevention summit in Washington DC. There were some two hundred of us from all over the country – advocates, policy shapers,...
by Mark Beckwith | Dec 5, 2022 | Uncategorized
With a gentle smile and a calm demeanor, the Japanese Zen priest spoke to his largely Western sitting group – in English: “Westerners seem to bring an extra challenge when engaged in meditation. When the dust appears – as it inevitably does in the form of...
