Are you hungry? I am a woman on a mission (to state the obvious). No doubt, it sometimes looks like several missions: art’s public purpose, integrity and accountability in both public and private institutions, acknowledging our differences and healing the wounds we’ve made from them. But really, I have only one mission: to awaken awareness …
One thing I know for certain is that our struggles in the little world of our own hearts, minds, and relationships are inscribed on the big world that comprises the institutions, communities, and movements that human beings make. Turn the conventional assertion on its head: As below, so above. I was talking with a visiting …
What do Islamophobia, a friend’s disappointment, and the Jewish New Year have in common? Each offers the opportunity to remember and practice the simple things that support the renewal of possibility. The Jewish New Year, Rosh HaShanah, begins Wednesday night. I have been less involved in Jewish communal spirituality this year than at any other …
Passover starts Monday evening, the great celebration of liberation from bondage, both literal and figurative. For the first seder—the ritual meal of symbolic foods that accompanies the retelling of the Exodus from Egypt—I will be with friends whose lives are dedicated to progressive politics. I expect that in the telling, there will be many parallels …
Just about every spiritual tradition preaches it; just about every psychological tradition teaches it. So why is it so hard to learn to separate one’s desire from expectations of its fulfillment? Why is it so tempting to give up wanting what doesn’t seem to be forthcoming? One of my strongest desires is help potentiate a …
Judging by how many impertinent questions I asked in childhood, I came into this world with an inquiring mind. But in some ways, I have only just become a seeker, and I am only now beginning to understand what this means. I am trying to notice cues and signposts that come my way, with the …
“Philosophy” conjures dusty places and donnish faces, elbow patches on corduroy jackets, fusty squares straining to split hairs. But when I look back on this year, it is a problem in philosophy that commands my attention and gives meaning to my journey. Anyone who feels the suffering of our fellows and sees the hope of …
Current controversy around a work of art has me asking this question: what is our obligation to respect what is sacred to others, especially if it has no such significance to ourselves? In this story, four different notions of the sacred have come into conflict. Talk about a teachable moment! What can be learned from …
When I was a kid, Thanksgiving meant tracing your spread-out fingers on construction paper to make a colorful turkey cut-out, and listening to prepackaged accounts of harmony among the early European settlers and the Native Americans who took pity on them, teaching them to grow corn, hunt deer and catch fish. At home, we cooked …
A kind reader directed me to The Singing Revolution, a film on Estonians’ movement to regain their independence from the Soviet Union, highlighting the special role music played in the sustenance of spirit and solidarity. And also, for me, a film on the double meaning of patriotism, both a shining strength—the indispensable key to independence—and …