For Christmas, my 80 year-old-brother gave me, soon to turn 77, Priscilla Long’s "Dancing with the Muse in Old Age."  A celebration of artists and others who do great work in their later years, Long’s book includes a short discussion on “A Spiritual Life” in which she posits that “in old age many persons become more spiritual.”

As NFL players prepare to take the field for the last Sunday of the regular season, the Rev. William Barber II, prominent pastor and activist, offered a prayer for NFL players and Damar Hamlin, the 24-year-old Buffalo Bills safety who went into cardiac arrest after making a tackle in Cincinnati Monday night (Jan. 2).

We have the right to say whatever we want, right? Isn’t that what the First Amendment says? Not necessarily. While the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law abridging the right of free speech, there is no such restriction on the U.S. Supreme Court.

God, who loves us unconditionally, gave us free will, the option to do good or to do the opposite of good (evil). The choice of practicing evil results in a condition known as sin. Evil is the action, and sin is the result of that action (separation from good).

This is the third and final installment in my crowd-sourced series where Jewish people share things we wish non-Jews understood. In the previous two articles in the series, we covered things like Chanukah, horns, antisemitism and the wide variety of belief within Judaism. In this article, we’ll get songs stuck in your head, make you are of the Jewish disdain for the phrase, “Judeo-Christian” and point out that Judaism is its own whole set of beliefs independent of other religions.

Long before Northern Europeans established the Clausian gift-giving tradition, early Christians in the Mediterranean region celebrated the Epiphany by exchanging gifts in the tradition of the three kings mentioned in the bible. Though they are not mentioned by name in Scripture, the three kings Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar are essential to Three Kings Day. The colonization of the Americas brought the tradition from Spain to the Americas. Now it is also celebrated in Spokane.