Note: The following article contains spoilers for the Marvel movie Thunderbolts* For basically my entire adult life, I have been regaled with stories from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. These stories, the comics they are based on, and the genre of superhero fiction as a whole comprise our modern mythologies. Gods and heroes battle demons and villains in an epic struggle for d...

My mom, ever the rebel, was not one for “passing things down” in the traditional sense. But she sure taught us how to play tennis. My mom weighs all of 90 pounds and is often found with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other. She doesn’t look the part of an athlete, but boy did she play a mean game. Family lore has it that in Wisconsin in 1977 she was ranked #1 in s...

The Guadalupe River rose around 30 feet in less than ninety minutes around four o’clock the morning of July 4th sweeping away cars, whole RV parks with people trapped inside, and over two dozen young girls at a camp that had been welcoming campers by the river for over one hundred years. In some places, the warnings couldn’t be issued fast enough, or were missing all together...

There are moments when the walls of our sanctuaries feel thin—when the needs outside press so forcefully that they reach us in the pews. Springfield, Ohio is living one of those moments. Once seen as a beacon of middle America, our community now holds a different kind of promise: not economic, but ethical. Thousands of Haitian neighbors have arrived among us—not as a politica...

“I am not interested in reform; I’m interested in revolution.” Leon Waters Traveling with a group of peacebuilders with the Global Immersion Project, Mr. Leon Waters just finished providing a tour of the unseen markers of the rich tapestry of African history, struggle, and self-determination that helped shape New Orleans. He spoke these words with the authority that only come...