Time for another Random Wednesday here on The Zen Pagan -- this week's dose of links, short bits, and curiosities. Heavy on politics this week, as you might expect. Read more
Time for another Random Wednesday here on The Zen Pagan -- this week's dose of links, short bits, and curiosities. Heavy on politics this week, as you might expect. Read more
And when I watched Cage what I found was more than a tale of a black superhero with crossover appeal. I found the universal hero, the one that Joseph Campbell famously assigned a thousand faces. Read more
And you cannot connect with another human being if you start with the belief that because their calculus of which Presidential candidate was least awful differed from yours, that person is therefore awful. Read more
If you didn't cast your ballot because you didn't want to vote for any of the lousy candidates for President on your ballot, by not just skipping that race and voting on the rest you missed on on not just the opportunity to vote on downticket races but also to participate in direct democracy -- real democracy -- on bond issues and ballot questions. It's not much but if we don't preserve that seed of actual citizen rule by participating in the bit of it that we do have, it can never flourish. Give Athena her due, preserve and protect the embers of democracy. Read more
Every time that someone said "We're praying for her", the subtext of that was "I care. I am emotionally invested in the outcome of this, at the deepest level of my spirit where I confront the mystery of Self and Universe. I stand with you." Read more
Every bit of progress begins with an act of Imagination. Before slaves can fight for freedom, before a community can organize to kick out kings or capitalists or any other sorts of rulers, there has to be someone who imagines that thing to be possible. Read more
This is, by some reckoning, the "Pagan New Year", and new years are a good time for new beginnings. So this week I'm starting what I intend to be a more-or-less regular feature here on The Zen Pagan, "Random Wednesday" -- a collection of random thoughts, observations, news, links, and comments. Read more
Now, as it happens, I have had some practice in dealing with people with deplorable ideas. Because you're probably one of them. That frustration you feel when you see someone express support for Trump or Clinton, that sugar rush of self-righteousness you get when you condemn them? I feel that about you when you express one of the views I listed above. Your politics are awful. But if I were to unfriend and boycott everyone with bad ideas I would never leave the house. I'm stuck on this planet with you and have to try to learn to love you and work with you anyway. Read more
And it's occurred to me that the hospital is a liminal space: between life and death, illness and wellness, joy and sorrow. A temple to shining Apollo and to Yakushi, the Medicine Buddha; but also a place of death and dying, of the ferryman Charon and of the Bodhisattva Jizo who descends into hell realms. People are healed here but people also die here. Read more
My younger friends may be surprised to learn this, but it was not that long ago that the idea of urinating on demand for an employer would have been universally understood to be ridiculous. Read more
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