Spirituality

Salvation, Redemption Are Reasons For Holidays

By Rabbi Irwin Wiener Guest Writer If our lives have been blessed, the way to say “thank you” is with responsible conduct. Additionally, this season gives us the opportunity to display the goodness that can be found in each...

Forgiveness Helps Get Our Spiritual House In Order

By Rev Susan Wilmot Guest Writer Perhaps, like me, you experience a kind of reverse pole effect living here in the Valley. There’s something about this time of year that has me itching to clean out stuff. It got me thinking...

Two Holidays Give Us Chance To Show Gratitude

By Rabbi Irwin Wiener Guest Writer November is truly a remarkable time of the year. Remarkable because we celebrate and commemorate two important events established to remind us of the gratitude we owe to so many. One is Veterans...

St. Mary Basha Student Meets The Pope, Gets Ride With Him

By Paul Maryniak Executive Editor A fall-break trip to Italy earlier this month left a 12-year-old Ahwatukee girl with a lifelong memory that wowed her classmates as well as parishioners at St. Benedict Catholic Church. Melanie...

Elections: Let Hope, Not Fear Be Your Guide

By Rabbi Dean Shapiro Guest Writer I loved Halloween as a boy. I’d wander through the streets near my house collecting goodies, convinced for all the world that my neighbors believed an actual skeleton was strolling through...

Darkness Will Not Overcome The Light

By Lynne Hartke Guest Writer A 16-inch lizard is normally hard to miss, but I do not see its full length at first, just a nose peeking out from behind a large boulder on the downward slope of a sandstone butte. “I think it’s...

Let’s Remember That We Must Love Our Neighbors

By Rev. Susan Wilmot Guest Writer While immigration issues have slipped out of the news cycle somewhat, especially the utterly appalling and inhumane separation of children from their parents, there are still literally hundreds...

We Need To Recalculate When We Stray From God’s Path

By Jean Newell Guest Writer My father had an innate sense of direction. I’ve often wondered if it came from his being raised on a dirt farm in Kansas. It could be pitch black at night with not a star in the sky, and he...

Fall Brings Warmth Of Love, Ecstatic Journey

By Rabbi Irwin Wiener, D.D. Guest Writer The heat is finally subsiding. The evenings are cooler. We can move about without worrying about too much exposure to the sun, and we feel a sense of togetherness after a season of...

We Need To Remember We Belong To Each Other

By Rev. Susan Wilmot Guest Writer We are living in extraordinary times, when many of us are experiencing increased violence in all its forms, including a significant upturn in verbal aggression and abuse, lies and public shaming....