Blog Posts

My first experience with Paths to Understanding was in November of 2017. I was invited to a board meeting. Our co-founder, Father Treacy, was present and the group was trying hard to keep the organization together after the sale of their retreat center, Camp Brotherhood, the year before. They were working through understandable grief and…

Everyone is talking about how divided we are. Most of the time this conversation is accompanied by a sense of dread and despair. People don’t know what to do. In her book, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, professor Lilliana Mason tells a story about how we got here and what it means. In…

We held our first LGT Council meeting on Tuesday, May 11th 2023. We met at the Upper Skagit Cultural Center. So far, the Council includes Upper Skagit Elders, Skagit Valley Catholic Churches, Mount Vernon Rotary, Burlington Lutheran Church, Skagit Valley YMCA, Skagit Unitarian Universalist Church, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints of Skagit County,…

May 31st is the birthday of Father William Treacy who co-founded our organization together with Rabbi Rafael Levine. Since I got involved in the Treacy Levine Center, now Paths to Understanding, we made big plans for Father Treacy’s birthday every year. We held big gatherings with food, music, and stories. During COVID, we invited people…

Paths to Understanding was invited by Bishop Shelley Bryan Wee to bring Indigenous leaders and Lutheran clergy together to engage in a question: How can Lutheran Christians begin to have a right relationship with Indigenous communities? In my work to counter dehumanization in the Pacific Northwest since 2015, I have often sensed that underneath Islamophobia,…

Temple De Hirsch Sinai synagogue in Seattle was vandalized with Antisemitic slurs and images this week. I am shocked but not surprised. I am certain that every person who receives our emails is saddened by this and stands with our Jewish neighbors. Here are some ways to do that: I talked about Antisemitism with a…

People often refer to the kind of work we do at PTU as “interfaith” or “multifaith.” These are good words. The challenge is with the word “faith”. Not all traditions use that word, and even many people in the Christian tradition use that word in different ways. For instance, some Christians use the word “faith”…