I consider both Rumi, creator of the Whirling Dervish Ceremony I witnessed, and Mother Mary to be unique bridge-builders between Christians and Muslims.

Overwhelming demand to a free public tour of the new Moses Lake Washington Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints spurs additional tours according to open house organizers.

We too quickly let language stand in our way of what we want to say. And I’m not just talking about the languages from cultural or ethnic backgrounds. We who speak English as our primary language too quickly subvert communication with each other when our personal attitude reveals we don’t really want to communicate with “certain other people.”

In 2022, the American Library Association (ALA) recorded the most attempted book bans ever during its history of tracking censorship. Many of these books have LGBTQ, racial inequality and gender or sexual identity content.

Having assumed that truth and beauty lay in fullness I clearly needed a lesson in the value of negative spaces.

In the religious world, clergy folk work with what writers, psychologists and philosophers call “meta-narratives.” This is to say we speak of a large, eternal story in which our smaller, personal story resides.