Healing, feeding the hungry, teaching God’s ways, stories of Jesus that taught the important of helping others. There’s much more. Jesus’ whole ministry taught that “doing right by each other” is “doing right by God.” Fortunately, my experience is that people do want to help each other out and very often do so. Good Friday teaches us that the time and type of help we want to provide can’t always be on our terms. Sometimes it will hurt and be inconvenient. Even Jesus asked his Father to make the crucifixion go away. No could do. Neither can all the crosses of our lives go away when we help others.  …

The powerful trio of guilt, blame and responsibility all occupy the same emotion space in our psyche. Well, maybe not exactly the same, but pretty close. Sometimes they even impersonate one another and engage in identity theft. So here’s how I like see them and separate them. (Note: I’m not saying this is THE way to see them, just my way.) Guilt is what I feel about myself when I do something wrong. Blame is what I impute to another when they do something wrong. Responsibility is what I accept for my actions and their consequences. I am not going to spend a lot of time teasing this out or…