The Catholic understanding has been that the death penalty has been become, like, outdated because in industrialized countries. We have other ways of protecting societies from dangerous people without killing them. And in fact, it's important to remember that much of the world has done away with the death penalty.

Faith is not accepting the world as it is but insisting on building the world God wants.

There is a difference between feeding someone and eating dinner with them. If every Christian at home just made room for the stranger we would end homelessness overnight.

We need to be politically engaged, but peculiar in how we engage. Jesus and the early Christians had a marvelous political imagination. They turned all the presumptions and ideas of power and blessing upside down.

The work of community, love, reconciliation, restoration is the work we cannot leave up to politicians. This is the work we are all called to do.

Sometimes people call folks here at the Simple Way saints. Usually they either want to applaud our lives and live vicariously through us, or they want to write us off as superhuman and create a safe distance. One of my favorite quotes, written on my wall here in bold black marker, is from Dorothy Day: "Don't call us saints; we don't want to be dismissed that easily

The more I travel, the more I see how important it is to each population to see that their history of the good and the bad is remembered by others.