“[C]ontemplation represents a way to disengage from the toxicity of our current world order, not in terms of supporting violent revolution, but in an opposite move: by embracing a revolution of humility and love. We cannot beat the greedy, violent, unjust enemy-that-is-us with weapons or military might. Only by “dropping out” of the system can…
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Art
Domestication and the Divine
Domestication of animals radically changed our relationship to our environment, and the price we paid was high. Diseases from livestock killed many (and with the rise of BSE and avian and swine flus, still do) and only those who developed immunity survived. We can thus see these survivors developing a morbid attachment to these creatures…
Things I’ll Tell My Child Someday: You Don’t Possess Your Identity
………………………. There are so many things that pop in my head–nuggets of wisdom if you will–which I would love to share with my son. The problem is that he is only 10 months old and right now he’s focused on learning how to feed himself. So, I will be posting my fatherly wisdom here for…
The Light Can Be Blinding | Art by Izziyana Suhaimi
Paul’s blinding conversion and Jesus’ time in the desert are both examples of graphical entries into Heidegger’s ‘clearing’, of coming up on the truer core of ourselves and the different light that eliminates us there. They are, in the fullest sense, moments of enlightenment. Yet, strangely, they are also within the corpus of what we…
Things I’ll Tell My Child Someday: Don’t Let Your Heart Turn To Stone
………………………. There are so many things that pop in my head–nuggets of wisdom if you will–which I would love to share with my son. The problem is that he is only 9 months old and right now he’s focused on learning how to feed himself. So, I will be posting my fatherly wisdom here for…
Made As Makers: A theopoetic motion picture that teaches us how to talk about the things that matter most.
……………… I was recently asked by one of my favorite educator/poet/theologians, Callid Keefe-Perry, to review his new 45-minute documentary film, Made As Makers. I felt honored. ……………… “Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot name them” ~Dana Gioia To paraphrase the illustrative Peter Rollins, many people of faith feel a desire to…
Things I’ll Tell My Child Someday: Don’t be ashamed of your thoughts or feelings.
………………………. This is a new series I will be writing. To be brief, there are so many things that pop in my head–nuggets of wisdom if you will–which I would love to share with my son. The problem is that he is only 9 months old and right now he’s focused on learning how to…
Why Don’t Academics Talk Like Normal People?!? | Art by Charlene Liu
The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free. ~Spinoza I can always see the question coming. After recommending to a friend that they read a technical, heavy duty philosophical or theological text, I’m asked “why don’t they just talk like normal people, using normal…
Mistook Sign for Signified | mewithoutYou: Ten Stories
Provisionally eyed, practically alive, mistook sign for signified, And so sins have often tried to run him off a cliff like Gadarene swine Inside my wardrobe seem anchor bent, Wondering whether we were someone better then… Or maybe just better able to pretend, And what better means to our inevitable end? You know, I don’t…
Why Teens Get Bored | Art by Smithe, Mexico
Galvan’s experiment was quite ingenuous. She had kids, teens, and adults play a pirate video game while inside an fMRI scanner, with their heads restrained. Their arms were free to push buttons. With each successful turn of the game, they won some gold–on the screen flashed either a single gold coin, a small stack of…