Dr. Arthur Caliandro has a new medium. The successor to Norman Vincent Peale as Senior Minister at New York’s Marble Collegiate Church — the oldest Protestant congregation in North America — Caliandro spent 42 years in the pulpit, on radio and TV. As can be expected of a senior and a minister, his posts are about blogging, about loss, about his love of New York, and this, below, about the Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan:
I remember it as if it happened yesterday. Just before Christmas vacation during my freshman year of college, I had a couple of dates with a girl I really liked. The feelings for one another seemed mutual and we both looked forward to seeing each other after the holidays.
When we were back on campus, she refused to see or even talk to me. This drove me crazy and after weeks, her roommate explained the real story. When she told her parents she liked an Italian, they forbade her from having any contact with me.
Prejudice – making a judgment without knowledge or information. Being thoughtless.
Prejudice is demonic. We all have these ugly demons festering in our minds, if not our hearts. Unless we identify them for what they are, we create dark shadows in our souls and create distance from and hostility with others.