Nonaligned faith and practice in the present
Our primate hardwiring militates against welcoming migrants. It’s that simple. And that complicated.
Individual human beings always act out of self-interest. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s a simple animal survival drive. Beyond this, we are driven by a natural need to help our personal “species” survive. If we act for others, it is for our children, our families, our clan—our kin.
However, part of what makes human beings so successful among primates is our mental ability to extend our
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“Truth for Children,” by Sarah Hammerschlag, in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Autumn/Winter 2018 (VOL. 46, NOS. 3&4).
Sarah Hammerschlag is Associate Professor of Religion and Literature, Philosophy of Religions, and History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity
The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World,
by the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and Douglas Carlton Abrams
(Penguin Random House, 2016)
Without forgiveness, we remain tethered to the person who harmed us.
For several months I have felt as if I were slipping back into clinical depression again.
The outward signs are here. The fogged thinking, lack of enthusiasm, fussiness, longing to sleep. The undertone of despair. All too generalized to ascribe to any one or cluster of causes.
Yet somehow the subtle bodily symptoms I’ve come to recognize over the decades are not really present. As a scientist in the medieval sense—someone who seeks to know—I’ve looked inwardly for years at
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When I was a little Lutheran preacher’s kid in 1950s Ohio, the most familiar images of Jesus were ones with children gathered round and sitting on his knee. These accompanied songs like “Jesus Loves Me.”
I was blessed with caring parents and a child-friendly neighborhood, and my father’s sermons were about Jesus’ compassionate humanity. These childhood portrayals of Jesus did not clash very much with my personal experience of family and community.
When Jesus utters the cry
“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”
It is the cry
Of Job, that is,
the cry of every sentient being,
“Why am I dying?”
The only answer that comes back
from the universe is,
“Because you are mortal.”
What is it
I’ve decided I can’t
cope with
that hasn’t happened
yet
That I’d rather
lock my jaw or
pluck out my eye
than face?
A day?
Two? Three?
Before either I
see through to it or
can no longer
On Monday, January 29, 2007, I published this essay on my old Walhydra’s Porch blog. Coming out of the darkness of this particularly dark winter, I feel like it’s worth sharing again. (See Gather Victoria’s post, “Feast of Light: Reviving the Magical Foods of Imbolc,” for a new piece on the festival.)
By now the gentle reader knows what an unrepentant grouch Walhydra wants everyone to think she is…but there’s
There’s something wrong with
how we do winter, making it
the busiest time of year. Our calendar
Is all wrong. Yes, the sun
starts back
on the solstice,
but that just means
we should be rolling over in our sleep
and waiting for spring.
Why—though the empire insist—
do we stay above ground,
scurrying around
as if
everything has to
American culture has been fixated from the start on two principles inherited from the 17th century English society that established the colonies: the mandate to cure physical, social, and moral ills, and the primacy of ownership.
Whether Puritan, Catholic, or Dissenter, those first immigrants and refugees all thought that they could do better out from under the ruling hierarchy of their home island. Either that or they were hired or indentured by those same higher-ups, who claimed to own the
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