Tag: faith

Dear Antonio,

When I think about our friendship, I obviously start with our shared high school experience.

Ah, those memories from teenage years.  There's no end to the stories of how terribly we used to behave, most especially to teachers.  Yeah we were terribly juvenile, but the stuff we used to do back then were pretty witty,

Joe Michael Sasanuma, who earlier today died at the eternal age of 18, never had a moment in which he didn't enjoy life.

He lived by the words "What's the point of living if you can't feel alive?", a line fittingly taken from the James Bond movie "The World is Not Enough".  Of the many things

I try to live by the three Rs:  Always be Respectful, often be Responsible and sometimes show Restraint.

The first R, the respect, comes from my belief that everyone on earth has the ability to contribute something for the betterment of society.

I suppose it's my faith in the fundamental goodness of human kind that underlies this belief, but the

I was deeply moved by Lenten passage.  It epitomizes what I need to strive for in my journey of faith.

In one sense I have come pretty far in that journey, for I no longer find the having of faith to be that difficult.  To be sure, faith has never come easy and it probably never will, but

9/10

It is 17th century Japan, a bad time and place to be a Christian.  The feudal government is committed to eradicating Christianity through the torture and killing of believers, convinced that the religion is unfit for the Japanese people.

In the Portuguese colony of Macau, the Jesuits receive news that Father Cristóvão Ferreira (Liam Neeson), who is living in Nagasaki, Japan, renounced his faith after being tortured.

Dear James,

As I attended your wedding celebration last week, so many thoughts came rushing through my head.

I thought about our friendship and how it is a reminder that friendships take many forms. You and I attended high school together, yet it was our geographic proximity during graduate school and the discovery then that we

I am a very critical and judgmental person.

I recently realized how serious my critical nature has become when the first words out of my mouth to a person who had just completed making a perfectly thoughtful remark was, "But isn't it...?"  Being critical has become so second nature to me that I have developed a pattern of "disagree first, think later."

It

René Descartes once said, "I think, therefore I am," apparently to make the point that someone wondering whether or not he or she exists is, in and of itself, proof that something, an "I", exists to do the thinking.

I suppose my equivalent would be "I opine, therefore I am," to make the point that having

When I heard that Texas Rangers' outfielder Josh Hamilton relapsed with alcohol again, I felt an indescribable mix of awe, sadness, courage, inspiration and strength.  Hamilton epitomizes the best and worst of human beings, the amazing things we are capable of but also the depths to which we can sink.  When I look at Hamilton,

The pictures and videos are all you need to understand that Japan has a long and painful road ahead even before the recovery can begin.  But for now, I am thankful that family, friends, and everyone I know in Japan are safe.

When something like this happens to a place and people you know very well,

Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."  --John 20:29

The story of the doubting Thomas is my favorite passage from the bible.  It was a favorite passage when I lacked faith because I was a Thomas who needed to see

My sister, that bored nincompoop, created Note in Facebook with a list of 25 random facts about herself and then created a "rule" under which an unfortunate soul who was tagged will have to do the same thing.  Presumably this is the most modern rendition of the cursed chain letter so the failure to respond