This is my first post in 2018, so of course it has resolutions in it. A few weeks ago I wrote on a quote I saw in the Writers Lounge at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok. (See Write because you have to) The Oriental was a frequent stopping point for authors and other public figures in… Read More Resolutions for a New Year
One of the greatest pains in life is the isolation caused by personal or family struggles that we feel can’t be shared. It is just too shameful, too jarring perhaps from the personal narrative we have carefully constructed and maintained. Then something happens, and the whole edifice begins to collapse, sometimes slowly but often rapidly… Read More Mental Illness and the Courage to be Real
As some of you know, I recently published my first book. In the past 13 years, I had published nine articles, three chapters in books and finished a PhD thesis. But not a full book, until October. I have wanted to be an author since I was 10 years old, when I wrote detective stories… Read More Write because you have to
As the world gets caught sleeping again during a horrible developing genocide, courage is again in short supply on the part of world leaders. The Armenians and Syrian Christians in Turkey in the early 20th century, the Jews in the Holocaust, Cambodia at the end of the 1970’s, Rwanda in 1994, Bosnia in the 1990’s.… Read More “The Presence of God is also called Rohingya”
Yesterday here in the US was Thanksgiving holiday, a day to gather with family and friends. Along with my family, I’m grateful this year for those that stand with the “heroes” in their lives. Those that are faithful daily to the tasks that enable them to serve others, often not in the public eye. The… Read More Thankful for the people around the “Heroes”
The news from Northern California in the United States keeps getting worse. As I write this from Switzerland, wildfires that have already devastated areas of cities like Santa Rosa continue to spread. Over 5,000 houses and other structures have been destroyed, over 40 lives lost with many more still missing. The winds have picked up… Read More A Historian is a Missionary to the Past
For those living in the United States this week, it has been a surreal experience to observe a continued unfolding tragedy in Puerto Rico (and other islands in the Caribbean as well as Florida and Texas) due to the latest hurricanes while hearing a national discussion on whether professional athletes are showing enough respect for… Read More Seeing A Flawed Nation But Loving It Still
With these impassioned words, Indian journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh would lash the editors in Delhi over the telephone. Based in Bangalore in the Southern Indian state of Karnataka, Lankesh was overseeing a weekly edition of a Kannada-language magazine. She had a firmly established reputation for challenging the ruling government, as well as injustice whenever… Read More “Speak up, you must do more, why are all of you so timid!”
How do we respond when so much suffering surrounds us? This past week alone has seen a continuing potential genocide of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (Burma). The United Nations estimates that over 290,000 have fled to the border district of Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh in the past two weeks, to join the 100,000 already… Read More Silence as ‘Negative Space’
It must have been a stark and stunning image that September day in 1287: Edward I, the King of England, kneeling to receive communion from Rabban Sauma, an Asian Church of the East leader. Sent from a Mongol ruler named Arghun from the capital near modern day Beijing, (and with overall Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan’s… Read More Power Reversal: A 13th century Asian Christian leader gives Holy Communion to the King of England
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