I engage with local politics because it affects people I love. And I engage in national politics because it affects people I love.

We should refuse to get sucked into political camps and insist on pulling the best out of all of them. That's what Jesus did - challenge the worst of each camp and pull out the best of each.

It's impossible to separate our contemporary practice of the death penalty from our history around race and slavery, and specifically, lynching. Where lynchings were happening 100 years ago is where executions are happening today. And that's a haunting and eerie thing.

We need good laws, but no law can change a human heart - only God can do that.

Money has power. And so withholding money has power too, especially when a bunch of people do it together.

I think of the Catholic worker movement and Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin and others.

That is part of our critique of some of the charity and service work is that we can still keep relationships at a distance by creating programs that offer services but we don't really create a reconciled community.