Yearly Archives 2014

I can pretty much trace my initial religious awakening to the fact that my (Catholic) dad married my (Lutheran) mom in defiance of Catholic precepts at the time that forthrightly declared only Catholics could enter heaven. (This view was actually restated by the recent Pope Benedict as late as 2007, though his successor has been sounding a far softer tone.)

When I was in third or fourth grade listening to the priest’s lecture on this matter in a religious education class, I thought of my kindly mom at home, denied entrance to heaven with us because she was reared in a different faith tradition.

This was such self-evident poppycock that I remember being not so much offended or outraged as I was dismissive.

The thought did not escape me that if the padre and his faith could be so blindingly wrong on such a simple and obvious matter…

Believing in a heaven where my mother was denied entrance required suspe...

One of the happy occurrences of blogging is all the tangential roads one comes to in researching a particular topic—and the pleasurable travels down that road as one discovers and delights in the new and unexpected.

And so it has been this week as my intermittent meanderings down a road exploring “faith” led me, link by blessed link (truly, this is a chain that liberates rather than confines) to the wholly new knowledge that two of my favorite literary figures, Walt Whitman and Robert Ingersoll, were not only good friends but that Ingersoll, one of the renowned orators of his or any other time, actually delivered the eulogy at Whitman’s funeral in 1892.

And that it was duly transcribed and preserved for posterity and is now freely available on the Internet as the intellectual feast and profound artistic homage that it is, one great and expansive mind consorting with another in a sacred ritual of reverenc...

There was trepidation in my church when our minister’s contracted sabbatical came due after his first seven years with us and it was time to prepare for (and worry about) his forthcoming six months’ absence. He’s a beloved and charismatic figure, and there was more than a little concern we’d flounder around a bit without him, becoming less lively, losing our sheen, misplacing our mojo.

As it turned out, our concern was overblown. Unfounded, even. The organization hummed along, congregants filled in where needed, we snagged a talented part-time sabbatical minister to help manage the rest, and suddenly six months have gone by, with not one casualty or lost wandering soul among us (near as I can tell) who is bereft and woeful pending Chris’s return.

Oh, we’ll welcome him back heartily enough, and the joy will be genuine...

My online pal Amy Morgenstern over at Sermons in Stones had a brief blog post recently in which she asked, “…Is there a special place in hell for people who spend $425 on a lace t-shirt in a world where they could use that money to feed a hungry family for a month? And if so, am I going there too for spending $65 on a jacket?”

It’s a great couple of questions, and in my response to her I indicated that I had long had a blog post in mind addressing them, with the headline as you see it at the top of this page. She said she would read that post if I wrote it, so Amy, this one’s for you. (And for anyone else who has pondered these same questions, which I am going to guess is everyone who peruses this site.)

Unfortunately, the issue is not only $425 t-shirts and other forms of conspicuous consumption by what is commonly regarded as the 1% in this country...

One of the benefits of persisting with a blog for more than a year is you get to start riffing on “Second Annual” versions of this or that post. And being as how we have arrived at the summer solstice once again (when we need remind ourselves to rejoice in the light rather than lamenting, “Oh dear, now the days start to get shorter!”), I’ll keep the verbiage brief here and offer up another round of songs reflecting this most languid of seasons.

Poet Mary Oliver’s conclusion to her classic The Summer Day is put forth year-round as a stock-taking question, meant to challenge the passions that are perhaps dormant inside us: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?”

Worth pondering, but one part of the answer is easy, because this summer day and every day should include, if we know what is good and healthy and spiritually uplifting for us, an emphatic, “Definitely lis...