Michael Okinczyc-Cruz: Where Civic Life and Mystical Life Meet

Michael Okinczyc-Cruz: Where Civic Life and Mystical Life Meet

Season 2, Episode 5 of Messy Jesus Business, hosted by Sister Julia Walsh LISTEN HERE: IN THIS EPISODE: In Season 2, Episode 5 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh and Michael Okinczyc-Cruz discuss how his upbringing and experience as a person of Polish and Mexican ancestry helped bring him to his ministry as…

Sisterly solidarity, crisis in Cameroon

Sisterly solidarity, crisis in Cameroon

Beheaded bodies lying in the streets. Stray dogs and pigs picking at human corpses on the roadside. Vibrant communities silenced and still, everyone indoors, too afraid to go to school or to the market. Roadblocks stopping travel, isolating entire villages. A pregnant woman delivers a baby who doesn’t survive because they can’t get to the…

Breaking down the walls because ‘tú eras mi otra yo’

Breaking down the walls because ‘tú eras mi otra yo’

I once stood near the United States-Mexico border. In the journey to this edge, I witnessed the evidence of militarization: guns, checkpoints, armored vehicles, cameras. The steel fence rose from the sandy earth like a misplaced mountain. I felt my body tense from the feeling of surveillance. I felt the unease and sorrow that seemed…

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. meditation: “Peace on Earth” is a call to action

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. meditation: “Peace on Earth” is a call to action

Happy Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. day to all of you! What are you doing to honor the legacy of Dr. King today? Please, let us allow ourselves to be disturbed and transformed on this national holiday. This is not a day for sentimental history lessons. It is not a day to rest nor…

Thanksgiving in the midst of this mess

Thanksgiving in the midst of this mess

“It’s getting ugly!” “Society is starting to collapse!” One might be tempted to scream and cry when the headlines are scanned; when turmoil bubbles up and splashes upon any sense of security and comfort that has been shielding our privileged lives. The mess of injustice can burn us or it can mobilize us to be who…

Appropriately disturbed and loving my distant Aleppo neighbor
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Appropriately disturbed and loving my distant Aleppo neighbor

Along with many people far and near, I have been terribly disturbed by images from the Syrian war recently. Appropriately disturbed. Early last week, I felt physically ill while I watched a news story about doctors and hospitals being targeted by airstrikes. Then, just a few days later, the images of Omran Daqneesh, the five…