MOTHER TERESA USED TO SAY THAT the greatest pain for the poor she fed and comforted was not the physical facts of their poverty, nor the chronic hunger, the untreated infections or the million inconveniences that complicated their lives. Instead, she said, it was that they believed themselves to be invisible — People Who Don’t […]

By Dennis Lund “Canada — for Americans it’s almost like visiting another country.” — Lindsey Baxter THE JOKE ABOVE, FROM A FORMER COLLEAGUE, hockey hooligan and Canadian friend, emphasizes the similarities between the two nations. There are distinctions, but they are often distinctions without a difference. Canadians watch our economy much closer than we watch […]

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE PLACE AND THE PRICE OF GUNS in our American society is a voyage into a land strewn with disorder, trauma and death. The land of the free and the home of the brave is also a land that, on this question, is out of touch with its basic — and cherished […]

By Constance Beutel “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.” — H.G. Wells THE ACACIA BEHIND BENICIA LUTHERAN CHURCH ARE IN BLOOM, and so is the almond tree in my neighbor’s yard. Along with the migrating cedar waxwings and robins, these blossoms […]

By Mary Susan Gast MY ELDERLY MOTHER WAS TREATED during her final illness at Berrien General Hospital, run by the Seventh Day Adventist Church. The Seventh Day Adventists, based on their reading of Scripture, advocate a vegetarian diet. Yet my mother’s meals at the hospital included meat. The church’s website notes, “It is not our […]

By Robert Michaels TWO DECADES AGO I ATTENDED A 50th wedding anniversary party. The couple being celebrated was my friend’s parents. I had known this family for several years and attended many parties and gatherings. I felt like kin. In the presence of the couple’s children, grandchildren, relations and friends, the husband and wife, father […]

By Matt Talbot IT HAS BECOME ALMOST REFLEXIVE IN OUR SOCIETY to use the decade of the 1970s as a sort of nadir of tasteless tackiness. You know the tropes: orange shag carpet, bell bottoms, lime-green velour upholstery, and so on. Here’s the thing, though: such commentary has always carried a distinct whiff of elitism […]

IT WAS DECISIVELY ARGUED BY WAYNE LAPIERRE in a recent soul-stirring and compelling speech that the pathway to a safer America is to insure that barriers to ownership of guns — lots of guns, markedly including assault weapons — not be erected; and that we need a lot more good guys with guns to deal […]

THE FRUSTRATION AND OUTRAGE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY following the last election was perfectly understandable. Barack Obama’s re-election was shocking enough. Government continues to grow, and in short order the party’s discipline on tax increases dissolved in the chaos and confusion of the fiscal cliff fight. Yet it did not seem to occur to these […]