On April 18, 1951, Vinoba Bhave visited the Harijan colony in Pochampally, a village of seven hundred families in present-day Telangana. Two-thirds of these families had no land. At fifty-five, Bhave was an experienced follower of Gandhi, shaped by years spent in ashrams and prisons. That afternoon, as he had done in many villages during... Continue Reading →

On 15 November 1890, in a former Turkish slaughterhouse on the edge of Jerusalem's Old City, a French Dominican friar named Marie-Joseph Lagrange opened a school with one ambition: to bring the full machinery of modern historical study, languages, archaeology, comparative literature, and the careful dating of manuscripts, to bear on the Bible. Lagrange believed,... Continue Reading →

Green Junction Everything that people consume, use, and create comes from the earth’s resources. In the sustainability course I teach, we often reflect on human technological advancements over the past 100 years and the strain on the earth’s resources. For example, less than 20% of homes in rural America had indoor plumbing in 1920, according... Continue Reading →

Buddhism, Catholic Social Teaching, and the common good in the age of artificial intelligence In late May 1966, a slight Vietnamese monk, 39 years old, walked through the gatehouse of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. He was on a speaking tour arranged by Al Hassler of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. He had come to... Continue Reading →

Thomas Merton, Zen, and what artificial intelligence is doing to us In June 1964, a Trappist monk who rarely left his Kentucky monastery received his abbot’s permission and traveled to New York for a cup of tea. Thomas Merton was forty-nine. The man he went to see, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, was ninety-three and staying at... Continue Reading →

Green Junction The recent news that August 2026 was the warmest ever recorded was not surprising, given reports of record temperatures across the globe throughout the summer. Concurrently and inexplicably, the United States leadership announced plans to allow the release of more greenhouse gases that exacerbate the climate crisis. The United States Environmental Protection Agency... Continue Reading →