Spiritual Sunday I’m trying not to overreact to the anti-Muslim sentiment blowing through the United States at the moment. I keep telling myself that there is a core decency to Americans and that most are not stampeded into hysterical hatred by demagogic political and religious leaders. Although the United States has not always welcomed […]
I learned this past summer how, following the Holocaust, a number of former Nazis were able to embrace Christianity without their churches expecting them to repent. It sounds as though some of these men were able to feel cleansed of their sins without doing much in the way of serious soul searching. The issue raises […]
Spiritual Sunday Thanks to all of you who wrote this past week following the twin blows of my uncle’s death and news of the severity of Alan’s latest cancer diagnosis. The discussion in response to Thursday’s post about which goes deeper, self or love, brought to the periphery of my mind a catechism in which […]
Alexander Pope, taking his cue from the Roman poet Juvenal, knew what a crazy month August could be. In The Dunciad the end of civilization occurs in August, coinciding with the rise of the “dog star” Sirius: Now flam’d the Dog Star’s unpropitious ray, Smote ev’ry brain, and wither’d every bay [poet]; Sick was the […]
Spiritual Sunday Recently I asked Ugandan Farida Bag, a regular reader of this website, whether it was appropriate to wish her a Happy Ramadan, the month-long Islamic observance that started this past week. She sent back the following lovely letter, along with a food poem. Farida’s appreciation of the poem serves as evidence that the […]
A Ramadan poem by Rumi.
Spiritual Sunday My wife Julia has been telling me about a book that she’s reading, Geneen Roth’s Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything. The thesis of the book seems to be that overeating, like other compulsions and obsessions, is a means of escaping a spiritual emptiness. Or to put it another […]
Spiritual Sunday Thanks to Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion for alerting me to this wonderful passage from John Updike’s “Churchgoing” (which appears in Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories, 1962): There was a time when I wondered why more people did not go to church. Taken purely as a human recreation, what could be more delightful, […]
Mel Gibson in Braveheart Film Friday Mel Gibson is in the news again with recorded rants against his girlfriend that are so vicious that even his ardent supporters are backing away. (You can learn about, and even listen to, the rants here but I advise caution.) I’ve never been a Gibson fan and this website […]
