And so it begins

This is the continuation of a blog with the same name that lived on the website of the Albany Times Union for more than seven years until last week, when the newspaper decided to end that service. I am grateful to the staff of the paper for giving me the opportunity to reach out to their large audience and develop a following that was concerned about the role of religion in our public life.

We in the Capital District are blessed to have an interfaith community that willingly shares its beliefs without feeling the necessity to attack those who believe differently. We gather on issues where we agree and travel our own paths on issues where we differ. Those differences center on substance, never on the character or tenets of the other.

By way of introduction, my name Walter Ayres and I am an ordained deacon in the Roman Catholic Church. I also am director of Catholic Charities Commission on Peace and Justice, a member of the Capital Area Council of Churches, the Labor Religion Coalition of New York State, and the Interfaith Alliance of Upstate New York.

Like God, I am not a member of a political party.

When I began my blog for the Times Union, I wrote that it would be about "religion, politics and a little bit more." That also is my aim here.