Last year around this time, I posted an essay that turned out to be more controversial than I thought it would be. Since I’m always in favor of stirring things up, I thought I’d run it past everyone again this year. Enjoy! On Christmas Eve morning, I noticed that a Facebook friend had posted a poll on her site. The question was: Which is more meaningful to you—Christmas or Easter? While many respondents commented that their vote was based on... Read more
A couple of years ago, I was asked to take on a temporary administrative position for the following semester in addition to my teaching duties. After agreeing to do so, my first step was to go on a fact-finding and listening tour, talking individually with the dozen or so people most knowledgeable concerning the issues I knew I would be grappling with. As I spent an hour or more with each of these colleagues, I found that it was often... Read more
In my religious tradition, we didn’t do saints. But we did do Christmas pageants—big time. I remember in various pageants being an angel, a wise man, a shepherd—all of the usual male roles. My most triumphant pageant appearance, though, was the year I got to be Joseph. Wearing a white dish towel on my head secured with a bathrobe belt, I gazed with a holy aspect at the plastic headed Jesus in the make-shift manger while the narrator read the... Read more
Baptist preacher’s kids get to do some very odd things. I memorized large portions of the Bible under duress, including–as a dutiful five-year-old–the names of the books of the Old Testament minor prophets to an obnoxious sing-songy tune. I could run through all of them in one breath—Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. These obscure texts were written in a ancient time for a distant people in contexts and for reasons known only to the most... Read more
Next semester I will be teaching an honors colloquium on Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), one of the most important and influential thinkers and writers in the Western tradition. As fate would have it, the first of Montaigne’s essays I read this morning was “Of the useful and the honorable,” reflections on what Montaigne learned from his life in public service, both as the mayor of Bordeaux and as a liaison and diplomat between warring (literally) factions in violence-torn 16th century... Read more
When Claremont (California) United Methodist Church unveiled its annual outdoor Nativity last week, it caused a stir that made the news on virtually every national outlet and sparked a debate that continues to rage on social media. This was no traditional, baby-in-a-manger tableau. Instead, Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus had been separated and locked up in individual chain-link pens, topped by barbed wire fencing. This Nativity scene was intended to reflect the plight of immigrants and asylum seekers whose... Read more
Advent is the liturgical season that is most meaningful to me. I first encountered the Episcopal church during Advent in the middle of the 1980s; the season has continued over the years to embody everything I’ve come to appreciate and embrace both about the Episcopal church and, more importantly, the incremental changes, shifts, and adjustments in my own spiritual journey. Nine years ago, I was asked for the first time to give a sermon at the small Episcopal church that... Read more
One of my teaching teammates this past semester in the interdisciplinary course I regularly participate in is a Victorian literature scholar. This, of course, includes Charles Dickens. Her choice from Dickens for the syllabus was the über-familiar A Christmas Carol (even though it was only October when we read it). This novella is so iconic and is such a staple of our cultural heritage that I did not suppose I would find much that was new in the text. I... Read more
At some point early in their musical training, all serious musicians are introduced to the “circle of fifths,” a handy chart that maps out the complicated but fascinating relationships among the twelve tones of the chromatic scale, their corresponding key signatures, as well as the associations between the major and minor keys. I was fortunate to have Katrina Munn, a graduate of Julliard, as my piano teacher from age four to eleven—she was a stickler for theory and precision and... Read more
I have taught philosophy in Catholic higher education for twenty-eight years as a non-Catholic. Although I have become accustomed to any number of Catholic commitments and beliefs that are far outside the parameters of the Protestant Christianity in which I was raised, few of these beliefs are more “out there” than the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. I have found that many—perhaps most—of my predominantly Catholic students believe, incorrectly, that the doctrine applies to virgin birth of Jesus. Even I... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In