Damian Costello

The red heifer ceremony flows out of our deepest human spiritual instincts. Rituals that combine land, power and wholeness, where mystery is greater than clarity. Lakota Catholic spirituality helps us to understand.

The red heifer has been in the news, with rumors that the ancient ceremony from Scripture will be revived. Like the wild ox, this sacrifice emphasizes power and life, and works to restore wholeness to the community.

Too often, contemporary Christians envision faith as an escape from the world. St. Patrick shows us through his life and his prayer-song "The Deer's Cry" that salvation is actually found at the heart of the world.

Some ecologically minded people hesitate or oppose harvesting Christmas trees. But a shift fostered by Indigenous people claims that harvesting something respectfully helps the species, the land and humans flourish. 

Unlike in most cartoons, the landscapes of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" are not just the setting. Along with the scrawny Christmas tree, the Earth is one of the most important characters.

The Navajo tell a story of how Turkey saved the People at the ending of one world and beginning of the next. Americans today can learn from this story. It might even change the way we understand Thanksgiving.

In the least religious state in the United States, the Black Madonna adorns a 16-by-12-foot mural on a library wall. The mural was created by 26-year-old Haitian American artist Raphaella Brice.

Humans wouldn't be here without the freely offered gifts of all the beings that precede and surround us. And we cannot flourish without living in harmony with the beings that give us life.

A Lakota Catholic church in North Dakota has a buffalo skull next to the tabernacle — and your parish should, too. Not to appropriate Indigenous culture, but to recover a lost teaching at the heart of salvation history.

The congruence of the spiritual journeys of St. Patrick and the Buddha is so striking that you take a second look at the idea of reincarnation.

At the central Vermont church I attend, in a stained-glass window that depicts the transfiguration, Moses has horns. When I researched why, here's what I learned.

The late Pope Benedict XVI's concern for the liturgy and his concern for the earth flowed from the same source: God's creative work and our response to it.

At the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes stands a weathered, gray rock near the holy spring, called "Mother Seton's Rock." St. Elizabeth Ann Seton sat on this rock on Sunday afternoons and taught the children.

About 25-30 million live Christmas trees are purchased in the U.S. each year. That prevalence makes it one of the most widespread — if mostly unrecognized — American ceremonies. And this ceremony is still developing.

"The nations of living things the world over — and we the two-leggeds, along with the children and smaller ones with them — come to you today [on Thanksgiving]," Black Elk prayed, "to express thanks."

Perspective: Seen through the lens of the Ghost Dance, Christian faith is the most relevant spirituality for our haunting ecological context — one that integrates both the principles of harmony and salvation.

Commentary: By recognizing relationship and building patterns of atoning for our failings, we can grow out of our non-Indigenous cultural limitations, such as our disconnection from relationship with the life around us.

On June 23, the eve of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, connect to an ancient tradition, "The Night of John's Fire," and rediscover fire not only as a survival tool or scorching threat, but also as a sacred presence.

Commentary: Known for converting Ireland, St. Patrick's relevance today comes from how the land of Ireland converted him.

Seeds of authentic kinship with the other-than-human world exist in Christian tradition as well as in Indigenous wisdom. Both views create a vision of the whole of creation, with humanity a small yet important part.