Author Archive
Bart Campolo
Take A Walk on 9/11
Thursday, September 8th, 2011
As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, many of us are wondering how best to honor the many victims of that tragedy and its aftermath.
Here in Cincinnati, my wife Marty’s answer is inviting some of our friends to join us on a walk with some Muslim and Jewish families she invited by simply calling their congregations. She got the idea from my friends and me at Abraham’s Path, who are sponsoring www.911walks.org to help people find or pull together their own 9/11 Walks all over the USA and around the world. The goal of these walks is simple: to help people honor all the victims of 9/11 by walking and talking kindly with neighbors and strangers, in celebration of our common humanity and in defiance of fear, misunderstanding, and hatred.
9/11 Walks: Remembrance through Reconciliation
Monday, August 8th, 2011
OK, so imagine you had this great idea to help people all over the world to do something really meaningful on 9/11/11 and just four weeks to pull it off?
Actually, you don’t need need to imagine anything. You DO have a great idea, a seriously great idea, right here and now. We all do! Now we just need to work together to turn that idea into an even greater reality.
Being Poor Is A Lot of Work
Thursday, July 14th, 2011
Until very recently, I had no idea how hard it is for some of our friends just to find somewhere to lay themselves down to sleep at night. I knew that inner-city families moved around a lot, but I didn’t realize how much heartache and humiliation goes before and after most of those moves, both for the families and for the neighborhoods they come and go from in search of better space.
Part of the problem is low incomes, of course, which leave almost everyone around here one minor setback way from missing rent. But beyond that, there are often rats and roaches and bedbugs to contend with, along with those normal, everyday conflicts with neighbors that, in this environment, can quickly become unacceptably dangerous. There are broken pipes and broken heaters and, as often as not, broken promises from landlords who live in a very different world.
Denying the Immortality of the Soul
Monday, May 30th, 2011
Chester has been my Monday night dinner companion for the better part of five years. He’s my friend, despite having never once lifted a finger to help or encourage me or anyone else, despite having often expressed the most debauched kind of selfishness, and despite his contempt for faith.
The doctor says Chester has six to twelve months to live, but everyone knows he won’t last that long. It isn’t just that he refuses to go back for radiation and chemotherapy; he was in terrible shape already. He lives alone, he eats only fast food, and he started smoking and drinking again as soon as he got home from the hospital. His lung cancer is just the last straw.
Hard-to-Learn Love
Monday, May 9th, 2011
I won’t even try to describe all of the maddening details of finding a HUD apartment for a homeless, no-income family that consists of a mother, five kids under the age of nine, and a nurturing father. It suffices to say that after three weeks of slogging through that kind of absurdity and ugliness, I began to understand why the mother, our friend Jaleena, tried to kill herself when her original building got condemned.
Even with all that, we barely managed an awful apartment, and by the time we did, most of the furniture Jaleena had left in the old place had been stolen by her former landlord.
When Grace Backfires
Saturday, April 2nd, 2011
In 1958 the Teddy Bears released the song “To know him is to love him,” which might as well have been called “To know, know, know, him is to love, love, love, him,” since that’s the way everybody remembers it. Either way, you get the idea: There’s this great guy out there, and the closer you get to him, the better you’re going to feel about him and, in all likelihood, the better he’s going to feel about spending time with you. After all, who doesn’t like being loved for who they really are?
Of course, there is no rule that says you can’t choose instead to get close to a lousy person, no matter how mean, lazy, stupid, violent, or unbelievably selfish he or she might be. On the contrary, there are plenty of rules saying we should do just that, in the name of Jesus. And there are plenty of stories and proverbs suggesting that when we do, wonderful things can happen. And so they do, especially early on in the relationship.
