My father-in-law, Alan Thornhill was an Anglican priest and playwright. My wife has been editing a book of reflections drawn from some of his sermons at the small country church in England which he served in retirement. In one of them he highlights three vital ingredients for a growing faith: air, food and exercise. We breath in and out as we […]

Gerald Henderson was not the most obvious person to lead a movement for truth-telling and racial healing. An Englishman, he was the product, as he put it, of a “white, privileged, middle class, private school background.”  Yet he was to become the trusted confidante of people of all races and classes in his adopted hometown of Liverpool, and he played […]

(I first posted this in August 2014 but current events in the US and international protests against police and government violence make it even more relevant.) In May of this year I was called for jury duty. Every Wednesday for a month I joined more than 100 other Richmonders of all backgrounds at the John Marshall courthouse. For hours we […]

We now have four granddaughters. The older two are eight and seven. The younger two were born during the Covid crisis, just five and three months ago. For the older two, much of the conversation centers on questions about the opening of the school year. But all of them are fortunate to have comfortable homes and parents with secure jobs […]

I am happy to share this guest column by my longtime friend and colleague Michael R. Wenger: In the wake of the televised murder of George Floyd by four police officers in Minneapolis, protesters in communities throughout the country have demanded the “defunding” and “reforming” of police departments.  Hopefully, this will lead to major structural reforms in policing.  But if […]

It was always in plain sight. We just chose not to see it. But the video in all its excruciating length showed us the casual brutality experienced every day by African Americans and other minorities. It was always in plain sight. The entrenched de facto segregation in our schools and neighborhoods, but many of us were too settled in our […]

On the day that the US launched two astronauts on SpaceX Dragon, protests, riots and violence erupted in more than 70 cities following the killing of an unarmed black man by a white police officer in Minneapolis. Perhaps nothing illustrates more starkly the gap between our extraordinary technical prowess and our moral failure as a nation to value the humanity […]

My colleague Rev Sylvester “Tee” Turner from Richmond, Va, offers a thought-provoking presentation of his approach to reconciliation (link to video) which he describes as a process of acknowledgment and apology; forgiveness; and accountability and working together.  He was speaking to a diverse group in Montreal as part of a Trustbuilding workshop.

I was honored to help facilitate a Trustbuilding training weekend in Quebec in early March just before the Covid-19 lockdown. The trustbuilding project comes at a key moment in Quebec and Canadian history, with the rise of Islamophobia and discrimination against indigenous, black and ethnic communities. The diverse group included anglophones and francophones, a First Nations elder, and immigrants from […]

Spring is beautiful in Texas. As new residents, we were unprepared for the abundance and the variety of wildflowers that seemed to spring up overnight. Although we live in an urban center, our apartment looks out over an undeveloped field which became a sea of bluebonnets. Our daily walks take us on a nearly two-mile pathway surrounded by tall grasses […]