• Politics/Culture - Religion

    A Few Notes on Paddling and Faith

    April 25, 2017 - By 

    Reader David Moriah wrote a heartfelt comment in response to my previous post on “Is the Center No Longer Holding?” I offer it to you here as a prelude to a brief meditation of my own, because I believe, among the various important points he raised, none is more vital and literally noteworthy for our time than the implications of the “faith” that he sketches with the powerful imagery that he does. His comment in full: “I have reached a stage in my life and amidst the accelerating centrifugal forces at loose on the planet when I surrender to my inability to…

  • Poetry - Politics/Culture - Religion

    Is the Center No Longer Holding?

    April 22, 2017 - By 

    We seem to be living in riven times. (Though one could ask with substantial justification: When hasn’t humanity lived in riven times?) Schisms abound, and they appear to be more rancorous and sharp than at any time in recent memory. The European Union is fragmenting; the French may well follow the lead of their counterparts across the channel by doing a “Frexit,” with the added dimension of electing an overt racist to lead them. Much of the world stays mired in intractable poverty under the autocracies and kleptocracies that serve as both its cause and effect. And in the United States, we endure,…

  • Poetry

    Contemplating the Season With
    Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Spring”

    April 16, 2017 - By 

    I’d been browsing earlier in the week for poems about spring, with the intention of sharing one or two on this blog’s or my personal Facebook page. Find a lovely photo of a flower or mustard field to accompany it, rejoice in all the rebirthing metaphors and imagery, have a feel-good post in time for the feel-good day of Easter Sunday, when the very heavens (or at least all our cultural icons) seem to sing in lush harmonies about the joys of the season. And so here popped “Spring” by Edna St. Vincent Millay onto my computer screen—and there went…

  • General Nonfiction - Religion

    The Puffed Up Self in Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”

    April 2, 2017 - By 

    “Our Delight in Destruction,” read the headline from a recent philosophy blog in the New York Times. (Yes, actual philosophers blogging in readable English in a daily newspaper—hope lives!) This was just a day after I had come across and held to my eyes a treasured volume, “Irrational Man,” a 1960s-era study of the great existential philosophers who detailed the human penchant for, well, not always behaving in the optimal fashion to promote our own best interests (nor the well-being of those around us). And through both those works, a long chew through Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” a far-reaching, soul-stirring anthem celebrating, no matter how…