Welcome to The Light, your quiet hour of reflection.
The Supreme Court is holding space this week for a question that cuts to the heart of pluralism: can Colorado exclude Catholic parishes from a publicly supported preschool program because they decline to follow state nondiscrimination rules on LGBT matters? It is a tension between two genuine goods, the dignity of families and the conscience of faith communities, and the court's answer will shape how those two things coexist in public life for years to come.
From within the church itself comes a more somber reckoning. Stephen Timmis, once chief executive of the Acts 29 church planting network, and his wife Janet, have each been charged with eight counts of rape, allegedly committed eighteen years ago while he led a congregation in Sheffield, England. The charges arrive more than six years after his removal over abusive leadership. Accountability, it seems, moves slowly, but it does move.
And from neuroscience, a quieter wonder. Researchers are tracing sickness syndrome, that total collapse of body and will we feel with the flu, to a single region of the brain. The idea that one small structure might orchestrate such a sweeping surrender of the self asks us again how much of our inner life lives in matter.
That's this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
