Writing on Muslim-Christian Relations, Interreligious Dialogue, & Islamophobia
Twenty-five years ago today, in the war-torn country of El Salvador, U.S.-trained gunmen marched onto a college campus, dragged priests from their beds and shot them in the quad. Earlier this year, a masked man came to the door of the Jesuit residence in the Syrian city of Homs, asking to see the priest. When …
Continue reading "Thy Kingdom Come: Reflections on Syria and El Salvador"
October 15, 2014 Today is the feast day of St. Teresa of Avila, the saint whose name I took at my confirmation. Teresa is a looming figure in Catholic history. A reformer, writer, and mystic, she was one of the first women to be named a Doctor of the Church, an honor which acknowledges the …
To the families in Shobak who welcomed me, the cab drivers in Amman who made me smile, the elderly neighbors who invited me for tea, the sisters who taught me how to dance, the Gazan mothers who weep for their children, the Syrian women who place flowers at graves, the Iraqis who die protecting their …
I painted his icon of Fr. Frans van der Lugt, in the hopes of promoting awareness about his life and death.
I don’t know what exactly brought tears to my eyes, but the combination of the beautiful culture and its tragic loss; the foreign sound of bombs and the familiar sound of Shami Arabic; and the human goodness that somehow persists in the midst of evil made a lump rise in my throat. I looked over and noticed that my teacher was fighting back tears, too.
JORDAN DENARI DUFFNER 