Estrangement among family and friends is a sad occurrence which is becoming increasingly common in a society that continues to trend towards isolation and loneliness. Our decade is more polarized than most but even though we can rehearse the arguments to defend our distance from parents, siblings, and formerly close friends, we really can do better if we make reconciliation our goal. Sometimes we have to put some distance between ourselves and those who would extinguish our "light" but estrangement should be a last resort. Let's not be too hasty in giving up on love.

The greatest moral failing of the modern world may be our quiet acceptance of what Dorothy Day called "our filthy rotten system." Every year the income gap grows wider and the gap in ownership of capital becomes more stark. If we cannot change course it is not hyperbole to predict that the USA is on its way to becoming what we have too easily called a "third world country."

If we ask ourselves what it was about the historical Jesus that inspired the loyal following and explosion of writing on his behalf in the first century of the common era, beyond all of the talk about a kind of divine fire insurance, we find a message that is unique and powerful and nearly impossible to incorporate into our lives: Love your enemies. As Marcus Borg described him, Jesus was the teacher of radical compassion and that, in the most healthy spiritual context, is why we still talk about him today.

The Bible doesn't speak with one point of view nor does it teach a singular message. Religious people have to be willing to enter the debate which is found even within the pages of scripture in order to choose the right path towards a healthy spirituality. You can find harsh judgement and prejudice in the Bible, and, if you look, you can find the cure for harsh judgement and prejudice. It just depends on what you are looking for.

Realizing that he had made a tragic mistake by ending his engagement to Regine Olsen, the Great Dane, Soren Kierkegaard, wrote in his journal, "To live without love is a mistake for which there is no reparation, either in this life or in the life to come." Successful coupling is more difficult in modern times when we no longer need a spouse for the basics of survival but, in the end, falling in love was never really about survival. It is about meaning, and who couldn't use more meaning in life, along with a little coffee and poetry?

This week's inauguration of Donald Trump was painful for most if not all of our listeners. Still, short of resignation, illness, or an implausible impeachment, his chaotic administration will be a threatening fact of life for the world for four more years. How then can we adapt ourselves to a reality we wanted so desperately to never face? How do we protest or resist his insanity while trying, at the same time, to heal the lethal divide of our nation?

If Trump keeps his campaign promise to undertake a mass deportation of undocumented migrants in the USA, we should prepare ourselves for some economic and service industry hits and we are not going to like. Acknowledging that our immigration system is broken and than neither a coast to coast wall or an open border is a workable solution, what can we do to fix this problem which is crucial to our future as a nation?

We are entering a new year with the single glaring feature of the return of Donald Trump to the presidency which will have far reaching implications both domestically and internationally. For most of us, this is a future to fear and yet, for good or for ill, we must face the reality we have been given, regardless of the future we had hoped for. So, now what? I say that we refuse to surrender and commit ourselves to the roll we progressives know best: resistance.

How Christmas is celebrated has evolved a great deal through the centuries but most of us alive today inherited a very churchy version of Christmas that focused on the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke and the whole incarnational theology of the ancient church. Modern progressives find it more uncomfortable to fit into those beliefs than an ugly Christmas sweater. If we demythologize the birth narratives we may be able to find merit in some of the Christmas traditions without all of the phony mythology.

A prophet is not someone who predicts the future. A prophet is a person, religious or not, who accurately describes the present, even if no one wants to hear it. There is a saying in journalism that says journalism happens when you publish something that someone doesn’t want published. Everything else is just advertising. The ancient prophets were the ones who could speak truth to the monarchy, to the priesthood, and to the marketplace, especially when they didn’t want to hear it. We don’t have many prophetic preachers in our day but even worse, we don’t have many prophetic congregations that are willing to stand up to a culture that has lost its way. As the old proverb goes, only dead fish always swim with the current!