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Across The River

Before the war you actually had to ask people’s names to know who they were. Now you can just observe what side of the river they live on. On the east side are the Bosniaks — Muslim citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the west are Croats, Catholic by faith. The two groups split my hometown of Mostar down the middle like an overripe pomegranate.

Burning

A human body on fire on a quiet street in a safe European city is a scene your mind is remarkably unequipped to comprehend. You see it first through the clear back panel of the bus-stop shelter as you get off the bus: Just a pile of something burning. Much bigger than a campfire. Perhaps a bonfire to keep the homeless warm.

October 2009

Global warming is irreversible, Lovelock says: We’ve already pushed the planet past the tipping point. Solar panels and compact fluorescents aren’t going to avert disaster. By the end of this century, he predicts, floods, droughts, violent storms, and melting polar ice caps will make most of the world uninhabitable.

What Jesus Would Do

John Dear On Nonviolence, Civil Disobedience, And Doing Time

For the record, I don’t believe you can be a Christian and support war in any form — or, for that matter, support greed that leads to global poverty or any form of injustice, racism, or sexism. Christians are supposed to be peacemakers. The only thing you can say for sure about Jesus is that he was nonviolent. That was his whole message. Martin Luther King Jr. said that this is actually the most exciting era for a Christian to be alive, because we’re at the brink of destruction, and our only choice is to lead humanity back to the nonviolence of Jesus. Gandhi said that Jesus was the most active practitioner of nonviolence in the history of the world, and the only people who don’t see that are Christians. It’s incredible!