Tom Adams
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Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a continuation of a series of reflections on America’s 250-year celebration and its meaning and call to action. Stef McGuire, a North Carolina advocate transplanted from Connecticut, shares how she spent the 4th and why it reinforced her...
After one bout at the “UFC Freedom 250” – an event held on the lawn of the White House as part of the 250th celebration – an invited fighter gleefully shouted into the waiting microphone “..Michelle Obama is a man. Am I right, America?”
I’m over 70 now—a woman for more than 30 years, a Catholic for over 20, and married to a Catholic woman for nearly 50. I’ve had time to reflect, to pray, and I’ve been given more gifts of faith than I ever expected. I came to religion with no childhood training at all. As a queer Catholic, that absence was a quiet blessing.
I was doing my best to ignore all the Trump hype about America’s 250th anniversary. His celebration isn’t mine. So, I figured I would sit this one out and pretend it wasn’t happening. The arrival of a Special Issue of Sojourners magazine gave me a different and healthier way to approach this important landmark. Today’s post reflects on the 250th and possible responses.
I got some unexpected gifts from seeing a billboard reminding me that May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Today’s post is about those gifts and the challenge of appreciating the mental health challenges we each face with compassion and understanding. I might not...
I’m writing from Dublin, a city that understands the math of motion. It was here that one of the most rapid wholesale migrations in history occurred. Driven by starvation during the potato famine, and met with deafening silence and inaction from England just across the water, the Irish scattered. They fled to New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States. They were nomads created by desperation and hostility from those abusing their power, and they were often treated poorly by their new homelands.
It’s often unclear what sparks curiosity and where it leads. Recently, I found myself wondering about the founders of Netflix—remembering the early days of DVDs arriving by mail—and whether they were still involved.
A few days ago, I joined other Christians in celebrating Easter. Whether through faith or nature or personal choices, spring is for many a time of hope. Depending of course on where you live, “spring” may begin at different times of the year. Today’s reflections are about the connection between hope and action. This post is in part a response to the challenge in last week’s piece Anchoring Joy by A. Adar Ayira on how joy is a different experience for Black people than white people.
When U.S.-born Black people speak, write, commune on the topic of JOY with similar backgrounded strangers, family, and friends, our conversations share a common societal overlay: the magic of BLACK JOY; that Joy that is legacy and heritage born of pain, hope, struggle, and impossible odds. The conversation is bound in that context, as it is this history that Black people tend to reference and in which we tend to anchor our Joy.
Editor’s Note: Our guest co-author today is Meredith Heneghan, a young St. Paul, MN resident and activist. She is part of our monthly Racial Justice Conversations and shared this report at our March 2026 meeting about the long-term and lingering harm caused by ICE’s...
Tom Adams writes and speaks on topics vital to the intersection of our personal lives with our community and global lives. He has for decades been engaged in and written about nonprofit leadership and transitions, spirituality and spiritual growth, how we each contribute to a more just and equitable world and recovery from addictions and the Twelve Step recovery movement.