An “Aha” Moment

You know how you can have an experience that you’ve had many times before, that has become almost routine, and then, out-of-the-blue, it brings a new insight? I’ve had that ...

How to Grow Faith

Even with 20 years of formal Catholic education, I’ve struggled with faith most of my adult life. Does God exist? Was Jesus really God? Am I fooling myself about God, ...

Magical Thinking?

I recently finished a book called “Not Forgotten, the True Story of My Imprisonment in North Korea” by Kenneth Bae. The author, a Korean-American who had emigrated to the U.S. ...

The Case for Change

A few years ago, I visited a Greek Orthodox monastery in Arizona with my wife, sister and brother-in-law. It was a beautiful, tranquil place, an oasis in the desert. But ...

God Myopia

Back in the day, the Des Moines Register, where I worked for 22 years, was a marvel of a newspaper. It had expert writers in so many areas, including a ...

A Blight on Humanity’s Soul

As I age, I find it much harder to watch scenes of violence on TV or in movies. That’s especially true of period dramas that depict Nazi atrocities or the ...