Consider a man who loves beautiful things, who makes a point of being present at new tragedies, seeing new pictures, and hearing new music. Such a man is not a philosopher, because he loves only beautiful things, whereas the philosopher loves beauty in itself. The man who only loves beautiful things is dreaming, whereas the…
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Art
Food Not Bombs
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. –Martin Luther King Jr. www.foodnotbombs.net
Is Religion a ‘Virus of the Mind?’
[I]t seems I was wrong and the idea of religions as “viruses of the mind” may have had its day. … [U]nless we twist the concept of a “virus” to include something helpful and adaptive to its host as well as something harmful, it simply does not apply. … This is how science (unlike religion)…
Tolerating Tolerance
Tolerance costs me nothing. Loving others — seeking their good, willing their prosperity and happiness, genuinely desiring their companionship — this is the hazardous business of community, of relationship-building, of making and sustaining friendships for the long haul. Tolerance is all too happy to avoid all this. Tolerance turns out to be a means for…
The Pax Romana
As Klaus Wengst writes: “That Pilate had Jesus executed on the cross shows that the death of Jesus is indissolubly bound up with the political peace that there was at that time, the Pax Romana, produced and guaranteed by Roman power. In the view of the procurator this execution, like many others, was virtually an…
My Kingdom Is Not Of This World
Psalters
I got to see a band last night that I’ve been wanting to see for a long time–Psalters. They played on a small Mennonite farm in Central Pennsylvania. I’m So glad I attended.
Sex is tragic and comical.
Nothing will stop sex being tragic and comic. It is above all the area of our lives where we can be rejected in our body entirety, where we can venture into the “exposed spontaneity” that Nagel talks about and find ourselves looking foolish or even repellent, so that the perception of ourselves we are offered…
The Risk of Love
It is not Jesus’ death that transforms but his life–a love life that had the power to persist beyond death, as the stories of the resurrection mysteriously suggest. Granted, that mystery has been almost ruined by dogmatic “I believes.” But for those with ears to hear afresh–the purpose of a Christian life is not whatever…
Violence Is So Primitive
This is Just a quick thought about violence. As I was in the process of thinking about conflicts, how and why they occur, and how they can be resolved, I’ve come to the conclusion (probably not an original one) that violence is truly primitive. I think about this subject often and feel passionately about it…