I have attached three book group discussion guides below. One is for a faith context. The other is secular. And the third is for an LGBTQ book group and HIV/AIDS-focused study.

One of the most important books I’ve ever read was by Barbara Kingsolver in her Appalachian adaptation of “David Copperfield.”

The tradition of Lei Day started back in the late 1920s because of a guy named Don Blanding. He was a poet who wrote for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin daily newspaper and realized that while everyone else in the world was doing May Day with maypoles and ribbons, Hawaii had something much better to celebrate.

As I grew older and my roots in the Christian faith deepened into Church leadership, I realized that the fleet and the Gospel have been in a long conversation all along.

These forms of bias go against the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For a long time, the Church has been part of systems that hurt people based on their race, gender, gender identity, who they love, or how their brains work. We want to change that. We believe the Holy Spirit calls us to fix these wrongs and work for the safety and dignity of everyone.

I had a dream last night. I couldn’t help but digest it all as I walked through the Art Institute of Chicago today.

Arise, you prisoners of the screen, the digital serfs of a hollow age.

The room is a cross section of the neighborhood, a mix of blue-collar young adults and middle-aged men ready to unwind for Super Bowl weekend. And retired folks just enjoying a night out.

While we’re busy rolling our eyes at a city sticker or a 9.5% corporate income tax rate, the global economy is looking at Illinois as one of the most formidable powers on the planet.

For a long time, my instinct has been to push hope as a shield against the world. But there comes a point where the gap between a hopeful sermon and a painful reality is just too wide.

One of my favorite professors gave me a piece of advice that stayed with me: He told me never to raise a word against Buddhism until I had actually read and understood its Scripture. I took that challenge to heart. After reading those texts, I never found a reason to speak against them.

With the official dissolution of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a vital piece of the American story is being tucked away into the archives.

When I look around at the people in my life and the stories filling my community, I see a pattern of upheaval that feels almost magnetic. It is as if a collective timer went off, signaling that the lives we were living are no longer large enough to hold us.

That simple phrase they noticed I use a lot, "It's cultural,” is the cornerstone of my work, guiding my advocacy for immigrants, or writing about the LGBTQ community, or leading people in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

I'm looking at the blank pages of a 2026 planner I’m planning to buy and realizing something profound. I have less idea of what the next year holds for me than ever before.

People have been asking me about an obscure song I often use to back my video posts. There’s a long story behind it.

Growing up, our dinner table was a rotation of local staples, but few things elicit the specific nostalgia that cold ginger chicken does.

While his impact on the Black and Latino communities is well documented, we often overlook how fundamentally he altered life for Chicago's LGBTQ community.

When I see Ald. Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth (48th) do her job, a fellow Filipino American, I think, “He helped pave the way for her, for us.”

The weather itself has been a poetic illustration of this internal state: an alternating mix of sunshine and rain, both falling simultaneously from a half-blue sky.