Easter in Ordinary

Weekly, I post four articles that I found significant and a poem accompanied by some comments about what we can learn from them. Our lives are enriched by seeing better. Each week, one article comes from the world of photography, a discipline that is about seeing. Another article comes from the world of technology, hence seeing something of the future. Another article takes up an aspect of our life together, seeing more clearly the other. Another article refers to faith, seeing the unseen. Finally, the weekly post concludes with a poem, because poetry is about seeing words whose arrangement allows us to see anew. Today, we will review the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, take another look at school shootings, see how ten photographers view inequality, hear from an archbishop at the Synod, and remember Rosa Parks in poetry. Have a great Saturday! How can the development goals be achieved? Last month, the United Nations approved a new set of goals to replace the...

The period following the Second Vatican Council, with all of the challenges in implementing the vision of the council, had many important figures. Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland , O.S.B., abbot primate of the Benedictine Confederation and then Archbishop of Milwaukee, was one of the more significant and, occasionally, controversial figures of that period. Personally, I heard Archbishop Weakland speak twice at the University of Notre Dame. He had chaired the writing of Economic Justice for All , the pastoral letter of the U.S. Catholic Bishops on the economy. Weakland's participation at the interfaith conference in Bangkok, Thailand where Thomas Merton died also intrigued me. I had read his writings as they appeared in secular and religious press. I recalled his participation in the Common Ground Initiative of Joseph Cardinal Bernadin. It was with great sadness that I learned of the sexual relationship and payout, revealed in 2002, that ended his public ministry. Arc...