What do we really want?

Do Americans even know what they want any longer? Most of the knee jerk answers people offer when asked what they really want seem to offer up something that, realistically, they aren't ever going to have. Some say they want to be wealthy, but that's a profoundly subjective goal. Others want to be happy, but…

Moral Bankruptcy?

I haven't written in a while because I have been thinking about the current world situation. From a spiritual perspective, we seem to be in a period of moral bankruptcy stemming from all moral questions being profoundly oversimplified. The cause of that reductionism is neither on the left or the right alone. Rather, it's everywhere.…

When Authority is Corrupt

I was watching a presentation by Joan Chittister recently as part of the Spiritual Directors International annual conference. In it, Sister Joan put forth the Benedictine steps to humility as a solution to what she - correctly, I believe - sees as the loss of values in our overly individualistic society. One of the qualities…

Truth, Justice, and the American Way

The old black and white Superman television program's opening informed us that Superman stood for "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." I'm not quite sure who is to blame, but Superman seems to have dropped the ball because now we have "Alternative Truths, Lack of Justice, and the Autocratic Corporate Way." The above photo is…

Do Values Still Exist?

Remember values? They were those old fashioned things that gave us a somewhat consistent outline of what we would and wouldn't do. Most people would say, for example, that killing other human beings is wrong. Other values included the idea that it was a good thing to be honest, to avoid cheating, to act with…