art

Go See "For Colored Girls"

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My heart and mind are full of this movie today, after my wife and I saw it last night. Until I read this review in our local paper by Mick LaSalle, I was wondering how Tyler Perry, whose Madea movie trailers are enough to make me never want to see the movies, could possibly do justice to this womanist play. LaSalle’s review reassured me. I’m no movie reviewer and what I have to say here is a personal take that will include a possible spoiler, so it would be best to read that review instead if you haven’t seen the movie yet. I do urge you to go.

Christianity

The Black Legend: Guy Fawkes Night and the Persecution of English Catholics

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In the Reformation, religious controversy and gunpowder mixed together on a large scale. Previous religious disputes involved swords, catapults, burnings at the stake, or sometimes just the pulling of beards and the smashing of wine bottles. In the 16th and 17th centuries, however, the whiff of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate became “the devil’s incense” for theological struggles. In the West, the blog posts have replaced cannonballs as tools of controversy. But in Great Britain on the fifth of November, Guy Fawkes Night keeps alive the memory of the era of “black powder theology.”

Christianity

Robert Spencer and Guy Fawkes: What about the original 9-11?

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Which makes one wonder what Bob Spencer thinks of Guy Fawkes. Fawkes’ plot, in relative terms, would have caused much more damage than 9-11 had it succeeded. Many today, including some Catholics, defend Fawkes, the way some “Polictically Correct” people defend Hamas and Hezbollah. So, I ask Mr. Spencer: What’s your position? Do you condemn “Gunpowder, Treason and Plot”, and the current pro-Guy Fawkes fad?

Culture

Portrait of the Polymath as an Old Man

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In my childhood, I wanted to know everything about everything, which I called “being a polymath”, because polymath was such an impressive word. I read omnivorously, and remembered almost all of what I had read. I was the star of my high school’s Reach For the Top team (short version: a Canadian high school Jeopardy). I knew all the songs on the top 30, every week, and could identify them from the first notes, to the amazement of my parents to whom all rock and roll sounded pretty much the same. Two long-remembered dreams from my childhood encapsulate this obsession.

Culture

Compassionate Care During Illness and Loss: The True Nature of Suffering

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by Brenda Shoshanna
Many, many questions arise in our minds when someone close to us is seriously ill. It takes a while to realize that these questions do not have one answer. They have many answers, appear in different ways, and may have different impacts on us at different times. In a sense a finger is being pointed in our direction. These questions are demanding a response .

Rethinking Religion

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom is a poem written by Jonathan Granoff about how seeking and knowing God leads to peace. Granoff serves as president of the Global Security Institute, which pursues peace by promoting arms control and nuclear disarmament. His poetry has been featured on Tikkun Daily in the past. For This Knowing
A hidden treasure longing to be known made us,
so that through us and in us and with us,
that treasure could be known. Through the wisdom that grows in beauty
it happens.

Culture

The Use and Misuse of Names

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I intuitively feel that these experiences, mystical but also sensual and embodied, are the core of spirituality and the foundation that religions build their vast tottering edifices upon: these experiences that work for us, that we then work hard to name and explicate in full logical or fantastically elaborated detail. Naming is not only important but unavoidable … but once the naming develops into major exclusionary truth claims, … and once these get identified with the worldly power involved in religious organization then all the power of the experience gets harnessed to the groupthink and the powerplays (exclusions, repressions and crusades) and we have the worst of religion. Dave Belden in response to How I Became a Pagan

Reading Dave’s comment, I was reminded of Deepak Chopra’s saying “God gave humans the truth, and the devil came and he said, ‘Let’s give it a name and call it religion.'” There is an inescapable tension between experience and the words we use to describe that experience, which cannot help but remove us from the experience itself.

Buddhism

America Meditates 2010: 30 Cities Throughout the Continent Meditate for Peace

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The international nongovernmental organization The Art of Living — founded in 1981 by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar — held a massive meditation ceremony last Sunday under the motto: “America Meditates — Because Peace Is Contagious.” Joining in for a synchronized meditation session were over thirty cities throughout the American continent, from Buenos Aires to New York City. Last year, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s event gathered over 20,000 people:
The aim was to soothe the suffering of people post a period which has seen economic challenges, political turmoil and natural disasters. Comfort, a sense of belonging and responsibility toward the community, and a positive approach were the natural outcomes when thousands of people united in an atmosphere of peace and calm. Some of the experiences of people: “Thank you for coming to my city and share this wonderful experience with us,” and “We need this kind of events in my country.

Buddhism

Religion Can Help Queer Youth (and How Buddhism Helped Me)

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Yesterday an estimated 1 million people wore purple to raise awareness about bullying of LGBTQ youth. In light of the highly publicized series of suicides related to homophobic bullying, many of us are wondering how we can help LGBTQ youth. To answer this question, I’ve been reflecting on what helped me as a queer teenager in an aggressively homophobic community. By the time I was 15, nearly every one of my LGBTQ-identified friends had tried to kill themselves. I was alone in not attempting suicide.