Now engaged to be married, selling cars now for a living, he steps back from the camera. His Abu Gharib ID bracelet is offered to view, a photo of him on the bracelet is faded and yet coiled in his open palm--the bracelet is evidence. They forced him to lie down in urine and feces, kicking him in the side until he fainted. Photography was part of the torture.  Chris Bartlett's Iraqi Detainees Photography Project recognized that photography was part of torture, used to objectify the men, further their humiliation. Passed around among the guards, the images later went worldwide. The images featured in his exhibition do the long work of repair, restoring dignity to these same men.  If there is something to be said about finding God in these images, finding God from a particular liturgical community of praxis, grounded in the work of resistance, let me step back from the image into the following two points of the present viewing. First, Easter is a time for the Church to celebrate...

  En el Norte, four of my grandchildren wait for me to answer the phone. I do not yet know it is them. They are in custody at a facility. Ordered to read from a paper saying these things, something written for the lawyer.      I hear some of it. The rest means they wait for me to hear all of it. I must steady my legs and stand as the kind of grandfather they need me to be, a hard man in a suit and a hairy chest that sweats but does not smell; a casual cold and reasonable man, the kind willing to fluff a few feathers if need be, someone who can do many things all very well, but certain and quick and find out the person in charge and deal with him, someone who can show them sense. My grandchildren want me to answer to that paper like that man.      Maybe they hope I understand when my oldest says my real name again, not my stage name. I do not know many people who know my real name, but they like me. I tell them they always like me when they remember, a...

  Humans will discover the day when war is no more, not because of obeying a command, not because of some innately endowed enthusiasm for the long slog to justice, but out of sheer interest as a species so many will take seriously their possibility for collaboration--for survival. As Luc Ferry will show in A Brief History of Thought  (Harper 2011) the key contribution of Christianity is its depiction of the person in which love binds one to concern for the common good of others.  Reviewing the book for Denver Journal, Jonah Haddad writes, "[A] ccording to Ferry, our “salvation” lies in the evolution of the human person and their ever-increasing knowledge of themselves and their world." The possibility of a world no longer fighting forever wars does depend on our mutual aid networks and the multiplier effect of persuading one another that our individual freedom stops when it impacts the freedom of others.  In the chapter "The Victory of Christianity over Greek Philoso...

A friend involved in writing prayers of the faithful with another has posed the question, Does God/how does God change what was going to happen because of our prayer? Asking too, what books informed this opinion.  Most of us can find the answer to this question without books. I happen to need them desperately. I'd like to try a few ways of talking: one of them will be anecdotal, one philosophical, another sociological and socio-psychological. Perhaps a narrative theology in conclusion. What a wild ride this answer could be! Does God act? Yes, this is the core belief. While revelation may be sourced not only in scripture or tradition but also in experience, here is one anecdote: I fell through a roof when I was in El Salvador, aged 19. The head-first fall onto concrete from 15 feet or so might have ended otherwise. I'm grateful to God and enter a seminary a few years later. At my home parish, of which I had been on delegation to our sister parish, the community offered prayer in...