Inside Story

Technology isn't unmitigated blessing. But it can come in handy sometimes. We had decided in an editorial meeting to try for a reflection from our longtime friend Jim Douglass on the situation in Sarajevo and his efforts to convince religious leaders to make an interfaith peace pilgrimage there. Contacting him wasn't necessarily going to be easy. We knew he was in Rome for several days, fasting in St. Peter's Square--under the pope's window, so to speak--but we didn't know if he was near a pay phone. Associate editor Jim Rice had just started making calls to track Douglass down when a page for him echoed through our hallways--"Jim Rice, Jim Douglass is calling from Rome for you." "I heard you were looking for me," Douglass said when Rice picked up the phone. He faxed his article to us from Rome a few days later--his moving reflections appear in this month's "New Wineskins" column. We are grateful that the Spirit can travel over fiber optics. We also have (from a little closer to home) a feature article that was first proposed to us by another friend, Glen Stassen, a reponse to Jim Wallis' February-March 1993 article, "Renewing the Heart of Faith." As Glen talked with friends and colleagues, they came up with some unexpected common ground around the theme of "incarnational discipleship." Glen's original proposal became a rich team effort.