art

How I Spent my Lent

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One day in Lent went like this: another scattered stupid day of laundry, a crazy amount of mediocre cooking, bad feelings about myself and my negligible achievements, and attempts to pull myself out of self-absorbed self-criticism. Scurry, scurry, worry, worry, and meta-worrying about worrying. Tiring. I got simple things done – a haircut, but only after wasting inordinate amounts of time surfing the web for “flattering haircuts for older women,” printing some images, doubting, looking for signs, irked at having to make all these decisions myself without clear divine commands. (Maybe the command I didn’t hear was, “Is this really important?

Healing Israel/Palestine

Time to Stop the Khad Gadya Machine

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Khad Gadya—the old Aramaic fable sung at the end of the Passover Seder is often associated with a sense of relief that the long evening is finally over.  It also helps that it comes after four glasses of wine. It traces a cascade of events beginning with a baby goat being devoured by a cat. Each verse adds a link to the chain reaction; a dog comes and bites the cat, a stick beats the dog, fire burns the stick, water puts out the fire…and on it goes. Each successive verse gets longer until the fable ends in a final karmic stroke; God kills the Death Angel. It’s part morality-play, part Rube Goldberg device.

Christianity

Who Would Moses or Jesus Vote For?

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I urge us to consider, in the face of the banal predictability of the national election campaigning, to discern whether voting is an expression of civic duty or is a form of collaboration with a corporate scam. Our future and the future of our planet are at stake.

Healing Israel/Palestine

A Progressive Zionist Message for Passover

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The following teaching is adapted from the Partners for Progressive Israel (formerly Meretz USA) weblog:
As we sit with families and friends for the Passover Seder, we rightly celebrate the liberation of the Jewish people. “Liberation” means the legendary emergence from slavery in Egypt, of course, but also the story of the Jewish people’s national liberation, which led to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. In the wake of centuries of persecution suffered by the Jewish people, Israel’s establishment was in keeping with the first of Rabbi Hillel’s great ethical guidelines, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” But, however important, the many aspects of statehood–territory, a flag, a currency, a government, an army–they do little to answer Hillel’s inseparable follow-up question, “And if I am only for myself, then what am I?” For progressive Zionists, Passover is a time when we are challenged to reconcile the tension in Hillel’s dualism: We celebrate national liberation as a Jewish success story, even as we realize today that Israel’s creation was also a Naqba, a catastrophe, for others.

Empathy

Occupy the Haggadah! – Radical thoughts for Passover

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Passover approaches and a fearful angel descends upon the homes of the Children of Israel. But this is not the Angel of Death, sent to take the first born son from every household of ancient Egypt. And this time, no daubing of blood on our doorposts will tell this angel to “pass over” our homes. For this is the Angel of Ignorance and Denial. This is the angel that blinds us to our own ills, that curses us to become the very Pharaoh we say we despise.

Atheism

Christopher Hitchens' Great-Grandfather Debated Atheists

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The best facts are often the least known. Here is an example: Most are unaware that the late and renowned atheist Christopher Hitchens had a great-grandfather who defended religion! Revd Edward Athanasius Hitchens (1839-1906) was curate of St. Guinefort the Holy Martyr, an Anglican parish in Gloucester, England. He was also an active participant in debates on religion as publisher and editor of the Anglo-Catholic newspaper The Invincible Aspergilium.

Culture

Rush Limbaugh, Verbal Abuse, and Objective Violence against Women

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When radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” who ought to post sex videos on-line, he not only revealed his own crass, crude ignorance, but he committed acts of verbal abuse. His comments were a kind of violence against women. Violence is a violation. It is a hurtful demonstration of a basic lack of respect. Those of us who are concerned about intimate violence, violence in personal relationships, tell our sisters and brothers to walk away from a partner the moment they call you out of your name.

Christianity

Think the NYPD is infiltrating Pat Robertson’s church?

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Listening to this latest example of a prominent American evangelical Christian leader declaring a natural disaster a punishment from on high for America’s sins, I reflect on how selectively political red lines are applied post-9/11. As I wrote elsewhere a while back in connection with the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, I don’t find this genre of dime-store theodicy credible – indeed, I have to admit that atheists often have a point when they complain about how religionists seem to only detect God’s hand in events that happen to conveniently reinforce their own worldview; is God not equally in charge when the “wicked” prosper on the other side of the globe, or even right next door? – but on the other hand I don’t find such sermonizing, simplistic though it may be, inherently threatening, provided it doesn’t cross the line into demonizing those with whose moral choices one disagrees with. For people who subscribe to traditional religious values, believe that God has expressed his preferences for our lives in no uncertain terms, and prefer their homilies to be tame and intellectually bite-sized, viewing history through such a black & white prism is near self-evident and perhaps even inevitable. I don’t think respectfully admitting to harboring such beliefs is–or should be viewed as – a political matter (not that this is all that Robertson has done historically).

Atheism

Does God Love Transgender People? A Transgender Atheist Says No, I Respond

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Natalie Reed, an atheist who is transgender has a new article called “God Does Not Love Trans People” over at Free Thought Blogs. It’s a very long post and raises numerous issues, many of which I simply can’t address for the sake of brevity. However, I do want to spend some time on her main assertion: transgender people should not believe in God or participate in religion because these are both harmful and dangerous and they enable the transphobic oppressive religious institutions. She states, “I honestly believe that religious faith is inherently dangerous and harmful.” For anyone who seeks to redefine God or say that God loves transgender people you are guilty of strengthening and bolstering a harmful and dangerous institution.