My recently concluded crappy month of June ended with a minor fender-bender, the result of a guy deciding that it was a good idea to come to a complete stop in the middle of a busy on-ramp onto I-95 North when there was a perfectly good merging lane for everyone once you get onto the interstate. I ran into the rear of his car. It wasn’t my fault. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. So now our 2011... Read more
I recently found myself in the midst of a Facebook discussion, the sort of online discussion that I should try to avoid at all costs. The topic was same-sex marriage; in the middle of some testy back and forth between persons of vastly different beliefs and commitments, a former student with whom I am friends on Facebook, a young Muslim woman, posted this: I honestly wonder – why are some religious folks so quick to condemn and oppose the legalization... Read more
A couple of weeks ago I posted an essay called “What They Don’t Tell Us About Wisdom,” inspired by a reading from the book of Proverbs that was part of the Sunday lectionary offerings that I had read in church as lector the previous Sunday. What They Don’t Tell Us About Wisdom–Part One The focus of the reading that Sunday, and the focus of much of Proverbs is Wisdom, presented as a woman who stands at the gates and has... Read more
Facebook reminded me that eight years ago I was on retreat at the New Camoldoli Hermitage in California, a retreat that turned out to be important in many ways–not the least being that it gave me a good deal of uninterrupted writing time during which I paid attention to my blog, which at the time was less than a year old. What follows is one of the essays that I wrote while on that retreat–sometimes our best attempts at holiness... Read more
I had an unusually positive experience a couple of days ago—amazingly enough, it was in a Facebook thread. A Facebook friend, whom I’ve not met in person but with whom I have exchanged a number of pleasantries (some rooted in our love of the Red Sox, others in our shared New England heritage, even others in our perceived agreement on many political/social issues) posted a meme on his FB site. It was from a Jewish rabbi, apparently copied and pasted from... Read more
Christianity, or any branch of it, loses its Christian character when its self-proclaimed supporters outnumber and outshout its actual adherents. Marilynne Robinson Is America a Christian nation? Attempts to answer this disputed question usually focus on specific language in the founding documents of the United States, quotations from the correspondence and essays of the Founding Fathers, what percentage of the citizenry identifies as “Christian,” and individual interpretations of history. It’s a familiar debate in which the various sides tend to align... Read more
Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the January 6th Select Committee last Tuesday was both powerful and devastating. When I learned early in the day who the “surprise” witness would be, my first thought was “how can a 25-year old White House aide and special assistant be this important in the story of the January 6th insurrection?” Before long, though, I realized that her position as Mark Meadows’ aide placed her perfectly to hear and see everything. She was always in the... Read more
Jeanne’s and my 9-month-old corgi, Bovina, has been the center of our lives since we flew to Atlanta and drove her back to Rhode Island when she was just six weeks old last October. Given what a large space she has staked out in our house and our daily routines since she walked into the house, it’s surprising that I have not written much about her on this blog since her arrival. People have asked me what Bovina’s “adjustment period”... Read more
In last Thursday’s blog post, I wrote about how the problematic philosophical theory of dualism has had such a powerful shaping influence on Christian doctrine that many Christians simply assume that they are a physical body and a non-physical soul. The soul is considered to be immaterial and immortal, while–as we all know–our bodies are temporary and have a short shelf life. Problems with the Soul It is clear from the gospels, though, that Jesus cared a great deal about... Read more
Last week I posted an essay called “Left-Brain Christianity or Right-Brain Faith?” which discussed the experiences and work of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neurobiologist who at age thirty-seven experienced a stroke and lost virtually all of her left-brain functions, functions that it took several years to recover. Among other things, I suggested that many versions of Christianity are “left-brain,” focused on logic, certainty, reason, facts, individuation, and so on, further suggesting that faith would greatly benefit from right-brain energies... Read more
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