‘INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY’ I listened for the Muse, But only heard her hum…. I was hoping for the lost chord But all I got was a strum… Inspiration is not a sensation Nor is it a thought, It’s a movement of the spirit That can’t be conjured Much less bought…. Creation is not contrivance Nor is art mere artifice It requires a higher power To break the mental ice… So the vessel of words Can sail thru once or twice…... Read more

Perhaps you already know the story behind India’s most beautiful building, the Taj Mahal (which means crown of palaces in Arabic, though it is in fact a mausoleum). The Taj Mahal is a monument to love, the love of Shah Jahan for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal (note the similarity to the current name of the building), who died bearing their fourteenth child. Grief stricken when she died prematurely, Jahan began building this magnificent tomb for Mumtaz in about 1631. Jahan... Read more

I am a person who loves art, artisanship, great skill used in the making of beautiful things. And there is plenty of that on display in India. Take for example this small green marble table with inlaid precious stones—cornelian, lapis lazuli, pearl. It took dozens and dozens of hours to make this little table which I bought and had shipped home. I took the time to do the tour when I was in Agra to see how these tables were... Read more

Yes that’s me with my doctoral student Jason Myers, who went with me to teach at what is perhaps India’s largest theological college, with 250 undergraduates. It was Taste of India Saturday, with proceeds going to various worthy student causes. Notice in the background– KFC, something all Kentuckians know well…. only in this case it stands for Kerala (a region in India) Food Court, and the food was decidedly not from Colonel Sanders. Here are some of our students smiling... Read more

Hinduism is of course a form of polytheism, rather like Mormonism. It involved a belief in multiple deities, and in the case of Hinduism, hundreds of lesser and greater gods of all sorts. If you go to the Encyclopedias and read up on the major ones like Shiva or Vishnu you get a pretty clear sense of the character of the religion, which divides people into castes, expects them to believe in karma and reincarnation, and even treats some human... Read more

On a sunny Saturday we managed to get off from teaching and headed for the hills. And these are some hills— the Himalayas to be specific. Actually we only made it to the top of the first range of the Himalayas to a town called Mussoorie (pronounced like the State). This is a resort town, full of back-packers and tourists as well as plenty of natives. And you have to have a professional driver to drive up those hills, as... Read more

I went off to India near the beginning of January to teach for a few weeks and see a few sites, since I’ve never been there before. Because the Christian college I was teaching at has had legal problems due to harassment from Hindus, I’ll not be mentioning the name of the school. But you’ll hear about those activities in a later post. Perhaps it will be well to share a few facts. India is the world’s largest democracy…. by... Read more

For those of us who lived through the 80s paranoia over HIV and AIDS, this movies reopens a festering wound in America’s soul. Who remembers Ryan White, stigmatized and kept out of school because he got a tainted blood transfusion? Who remembers when hysteria even went so far as to having officials suggesting that merely touching people with AIDS could give you the disease, and for a while professional sports figures were prepared to say they would not play with... Read more

The following was a release by Daniel J. Wakin in the NY Times, after the Vatican released its list of Greatest Pop Hits, or was that Pope Hits? Boo, hiss to the final snarky comment about Bob Dylan. “The official newspaper of the Holy See, L’Osservatore Romano, has published what it called a “semi-serious” guide to the Top 10 pop albums of all time. In first place was the Beatles’ “Revolver.” The next was “If I Could Only Remember My... Read more