Editor's Note:

This is a transcript, prepared by GGHQ, of the full-length DVD recording of the Rev. Michael Pfleger's remarks at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago on May 25,...

The last time Mike Pfleger searched the classifieds for an apartment, he was a 20-something-year-old seminarian who hadn't yet taken a vow to obey his bishop.

This morning, Pfleger, the 59-year-old pastor of St....

On Sunday morning, I was enjoying a brisk walk along the Hudson River in lower Manhattan and some quiet contemplation when my cell phone rang. It was my editor.

"Mike just called, and he...

In the end, it wasn't about the sex. Or the Manolo Blahniks. Or men with nice buns, bank accounts or bubbes.

For the ladies of "Sex and the City," there...

Memorial Day this year, for me, was as conflicted as the weather on the outskirts of Chicago. Sunny and bright one hour; overcast and threatening the next.

In the last six weeks, I lost...

Doom is such a marvelous word. While not exactly onomatopoeic, it almost sounds like the emotions the word is meant to evoke.

Destruction. Apocalypse. Judgment Day.

The resonance of doom's vowel -- especially if drawn out and intoned deeply a la James Earl Jones -- echoes the...

Doom is such a marvelous word. While not exactly onomatopoeic, it almost sounds like the emotions the word is meant to evoke.

Destruction. Apocalypse. Judgment Day.

The resonance of doom's vowel -- especially if drawn...

Some conversions take a lifetime.

For the Rev. Carroll "Bud" Pickett, it took 95.

Pickett, a Presbyterian minister, was the death house chaplain at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, where,...

My Uncle Satch was the least politically correct person I've ever known.

Racial and ethnic epithets (of all varieties) as well as George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words tripped off his tongue with cringe-worthy ease. He refused to mince words (no matter how much anyone pleaded with him to occasionally...

Three years and a few days ago, I was standing in the middle of St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, eating a cone of hazelnut gelato when smoke began to appear from the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel.

It was a little before 6 p.m., if memory serves, and...

To bless someone, in the most literal sense of the word, is to confer your hopes to them.

That's why so many traditional blessings begin with the word "may."

Take, for instance, what is perhaps the best-known Irish blessing (or toast, as the case may be this time...

Oprah Winfrey has been spiritually educating her viewers for years. Last week she began offering formal instruction to more than 700,000 students across the globe.

Before the first session of "A New Earth" -- a free, 10-week online class taught by Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle, the German-born spiritual teacher...

When I walked in to the Chicago Tattoo Factory on my birthday last fall, it was not on a whim. I'd been contemplating getting a tattoo for about 20 years.

Still, I told no one I was going -- not my husband, not my best friends. My first and...

A rabbi, a priest and a minister walk into a bar.

The bartender looks at them and says, "What is this, a joke?"

In one Pennsylvania bar, it's no laughing matter.

On the last Friday of every month, teams of chaplains -- one male and one female --...

STONE TOWN, Zanzibar -- It was hard to see the hallowed ground for all the minibuses full of tourists jockeying for position in the parking area outside Christ Church Cathedral one recent sweltering afternoon in Zanzibar's main commercial center.

I had come to this place not because of the...

Blantyre, Malawi -- They warned me about this.

They said to be careful, to not get too close, to not let "it" get to me, to not become overwhelmed or "too emotional."

After about three weeks of behaving myself and keeping my head and heart in check while...

First, my mother. Now, my cat.

I had no idea cats could get breast cancer until a couple of weeks ago when I felt a lump on Cleo's tummy. It'd have to come off, the vet said, and there was a good chance it was malignant.

Deja...

For reasons I cannot explain

There's some part of me wants to see

Graceland

-- Paul Simon, "Graceland"

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- It's one of my earliest (and admittedly oddest) memories, but I can recall exactly what I was doing when I heard Elvis Presley had died.

Wedding season is in full swing. I know this because of the four giddy, gorgeously engraved save-the-date for or invitations to nuptials that have arrived in the mail in recent weeks.

One of my husband's sons got engaged earlier this month and one of my best friends from college,...

Tony Soprano has 61 minutes left to find redemption.

When the head of the Soprano crime family lay down in an unmade bed alone at the end of last week's penultimate episode of The Sopranos, with an assault rifle across his chest, ostensibly waiting for his executioner to come...