Wallace Stevens once said, “How full of trifles everything is! It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.” At first glance, this perhaps sounds like a Disneyesque reflection on the uses of a hearty imaginal life. Or—since Stevens was a poet—a reflection on the power of metaphor to set solid things flying. At second glance—since Stevens was both a poet and an atheist—perhaps it is a reflection on what he saw as the most... Read more
Recently an organizer asked for a meeting and I went to pull out my phone to check my calendar. “My calendar is the boss of me,” I joked. She looked at me oddly, but said nothing. And in that nothing I heard the strangeness, the madness of what I had just said. I am not sure what she was thinking, but here is what I have been thinking since that awkward moment. A calendar serves as the representation of and... Read more
Imagine I’m sometimes asked how humanists can have “church” without invoking god. Here’s how I think about it: Imagine this scenario: When Imhotep in ancient Egypt invoked the great god Ra, he was invoking the human consciousness, not Ra Almighty. Imagine this: When Zadok, son of Ahitub, entered the holy of holies of Solomon’s brand new temple, perhaps he was talking to the greatest power on this earth—the human imagination. Imagine this: When the evangelist Billy Graham made his vast... Read more
Turns out there was another school shooting. Yeah, the one in Oregon, not the people who shot the cops in Las Vegas because they didn’t like the government – that was the day before, I think. No, in Portland, Oregon, at a high school, not the university one in Seattle. That’s been a few days ago. Yeah, it’s a pity, really. The scared kids, the grieving families. It’s a shame. But what are you going to do? I mean, people... Read more
Today we bless Tela La’Raine Love as she prepares for her gender reassignment surgery. Every day, Tela blesses this world with her courage, her determination, and her clear vision of a world where transwomen of color live safe, fulfilling, and long lives. Only in her 30’s, Tela serves as an elder, a mother, and a mentor to many young transwomen of color, struggling to survive in a culture that tells them to disappear or die. Although we hope that... Read more
Pragmatic philosopher John Dewey once said, “Growth itself is the only moral end.” To philosophers a word like “only” means a lot more than it does to most of us. And here, in the Twenty-First Century, looking back on the wreckage and horror of the Twentieth, it’s easy to dismiss such a sentiment with a “meh” and move on to the next soundbite. And “self-help”? Fahgettaboudit! After all, we’ve had it up to our ears with “growth,” haven’t we? Now... Read more
Last year, the rhododendron in front of our house was a sorry sight. Spindly branches and yellow leaves, a couple scraggly blooms. I half-heartedly attempted to help it out by sprinkling our used tea leaves on it (I vaguely remembered something about acidity being good for flowering plants). But by the fall, it was in such bad shape that I thought about asking our landlord to just take it out. Then, in November, just before our daughter was born, my... Read more
I’m deliberately late to the discussion of Elliot Rodgers’s homicidal spree. If you haven’t read any of the variety of excellent pieces discussing his misogyny, and how this horrific event relates to the threat of violence that hangs over every woman’s head, you should do that before you read anything more here. (Feel free to post links to your favorite pieces in the comments.) It’s important, and it needs to be said, and heard: Elliot Rogers killed seven people and... Read more
Literary critic Terry Eagleton said, “The din of conversation is as much meaning as we shall ever have.” I like that. On first glance, it appears to be bleak—human conversation is all the meaning there is? But imagine what human conversation has given us. Imagine the din of conversation under the porches and under the trees in Athens during the time of Socrates. Imagine the din of conversation in Baghdad in the late 700s when an institution called the House... Read more
“Have a nice weekend,” people say to each other in passing. Yet fewer and fewer people I know have “weekends,” anymore. Just speaking for myself, yesterday (Sunday) I had an evening meeting to facilitate, nothing major, but it still marks nine Sundays in a row I’ve worked in some way. And it’s not just minister-types like us — when we were in the hospital with our kid, everyone who worked there would say “it’s my Monday” or “it’s my Friday”... Read more
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