![The Tetragrammaton in Paleo-Hebrew (10th century BCE to 135 CE), by Manuela Ideacrea. [Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)]](https://emptypath.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Tetragrammaton_Paleo-Hebrew-940x400.jpg)
“YHWH is the bearer of consequence, not punishment or rewards.”
Excerpts from Dancing in God’s Earthquake: The Coming Transformation of Religion, by Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow (Orbis Books, 2020)
Blog Posts
… 
Opening the doors
I see
that the landscape
is
ever-changing.
One moment becomes
another,
not
in a sequence or
progression,
…
Excerpts from “A Jewel in the Lotus: Buddhist chaplaincy includes compassion and ‘skillful means,'” by Chris Berlin, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Autumn/Winter 2020
Chris Berlin, is an instructor in ministry and spiritual counseling and the denominational counselor to Buddhist students at Harvard Divinity School. With his colleague Cheryl Giles, he teaches the course Compassionate Care of the Dying: Buddhist Trainings and Techniques.
…The course interweaves teachings in the Buddhist view of impermanence and death with
When Dad died
I could
let him go
because
we had gone to McDonald’s
together.
Double cheeseburger,
shake, and fries.
Watching him
climb on the exercise bike
as soon as we
got back
to the nursing home,
I saw him at peace
with
Sasha Bley-Vroman reviews Richard Rothstein’s 2017 The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America in the October 2021 issue of Western Friend.
Beginning with the statement, “The GI Bill was a White guy thing,” Bley-Vroman tells us:
…
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan (1995)
…
Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking.
I have
!["Woe unto You, Scribes and Pharisees (Malheur à vous, scribes et pharisiens)," by James Tissot (between 1886 and 1894), Online Collection of Brooklyn Museum [Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons].](https://emptypath.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Brooklyn_Museum_-_Woe_unto_You_Scribes_and_Pharisees_Malheur_a_vous_scribes_et_pharisiens_-_James_Tissot-746x400.jpg)
Some fun with words that may go deeper than we usually expect to go in reading the Gospels.
In Mark’s account of Jesus’ Temple teaching, Jesus answers trick questions from the scholars and Pharisees and then responds with one of his own, translated in English as follows (Mark 12: 35-36):
…How can the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David? David himself, by the Holy Spirit, declared, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right
!["Frankfurt am Main - African refugees rallying for the right to stay in Germany" [Demo für Bleiberecht, Bahnhofsviertel], by Picturepest on flickr (1/1/2000)](https://emptypath.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Demo-fur-Bleiberecht_1024px-940x400.jpg)
I encourage readers to give full attention to the footnotes. I have used a reference librarian’s “due diligence” to offer relevant background information throughout this article.
It astonishes me sometimes—no, often—how every person I get to know—
everyone, regardless of everything, by which
Walhydra admits rather sheepishly that she was very much in the closet until around 1973.
It was then, while she was in her first year in Lutheran seminary, that she finally realized she couldn’t lie to herself anymore—and, better still, that the Divine One did not in fact condemn her for her “difference,” regardless of what the Church and most of Western civilization had to say.
Finding her courage, she dropped out, moved back to her beloved college town
…
Our notion of insect life cycles
is upside-down.
We watch the adult stage
and mourn.
Such a short life.
But nymphs live for
years. Then
one brief moment for sex
and egg laying.
!["Noisy Cicada, Male," by LadyDragonflyCC - >;< on flicker (8/30/2011) [Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)]](https://emptypath.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Cicada_1024px-150x150.jpg)
… 