I spent Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) with my Jewish Renewal community, a cohort that prizes creative liturgy, ecstatic chant, guided meditation and socially conscious sermons—just my style. Because one intention of the holiday is to turn toward life and away from whatever embitters it, many of the leaders talked about the terrible suffering …
I’ve been chewing over a problem—an especially tough esthetic-political-spiritual problem—and I wonder if you can help. Let me explain. Whether you look at the news or at the new TV season, at the local multiplex or the art gallery, at the nightclub or the bookstore, there’s no denying that our culture is generating boundless imagery …
Monday’s New York Times carried a story of epochal significance: the town pool of Stonewall, Mississippi, which had been filled with dirt to avoid integrating it in the 1970s, is being excavated and reopened for the benefit of the entire community, black and white. More than 20 years ago, my partner and I were hired …
A friend sent me the link to a story on NPR about Juan Williams’ new book condemning what Williams perceives as the stuck irrelevance of entrenched African American leadership and calling for a new leadership paradigm. “Have you thought about blogging on” this book? “It would be good,” she wrote, “to see what you have …
If you watch television, you may have noticed a remarkable rise in the number of programs infused with some sort of millenarian spirit: the benign intervention of extraterrestrials and the super-intelligent, the ascendancy of misfits, the cheerful embrace of end-of-the-world scenarios. Ain’t we got fun? Actually, yes. In fact, I’m so thrilled by the whole …
Do you hear a faint crackling sound? Don’t be alarmed, it’s just a paradigm shifting. And about time too. Today’s New York Times carries a report on policies proposed by the Association of Art Museum Directors; AAMD says museums should take care in exhibiting sacred objects. A particular focus is on indigenous objects, such as …
I feel I must stipulate that loyalty is a virtue, because so many wise people think it so. But the truth is, I’m not sure whether loyalty is a good thing, or even what it is. A friend wrote to me about her own loyal affections, by which I think she meant her tendency to …
It is reputed that Sigmund Freud died asking this question: What do women want? Everything, I suppose. This week, I discovered one surprisingly specific answer. If I could take a pill that achieved the effects of daily exercise, I would. But my desire for a hale and limber golden age easily trumps my indolence, so …
As I sat listening to someone speak eloquently against an injustice he had never directly experienced—you know the kind of thing, a man condemning the oppression of women or a non-Jewish German speaking passionately against the Nazis—an evil little thought arose in my mind. I overheard myself smugly dismissing the speaker as a hitchhiker: What’s …
It seems even the basic lessons, the things we feel we know as well as our own names, have to be refreshed from time to time. I’ve been preaching the healing powers of dialogue all my adult life, so I’m a little taken aback to find myself amazed that it turns out to be true! …