The word of the week is blame. Who should be blamed for Jared Lee Loughner, the loony white male devotee of the Sovereign Citizen Movement who shot nineteen people outside a Tucson supermarket on Saturday, killing six and wounding fourteen, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords? What happens when scapegoating overtakes a culture, as it has overtaken …
Something wonderful happened to me yesterday. I got a call from the director of an organization I’ve been working with, who said that a check had arrived from an anonymous donor, earmarked to support the new book I’m working on. My new book’s working title is But Beautiful: Art, Eros, and The World We Make. …
A few days ago, a wise friend told me, “You’ve really lost faith in everything, haven’t you?” But he had to modify the statement immediately. If faith means “confidence” or “trust,” then I have plenty of it. I have what seems to be an unshakable faith in human possibility: consistently, I see that what seems …
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 …
“Life is a mistake that only art can correct.” Stew, Passing Strange I discovered this week that I have become a member of a religion I used to reject: the Church of Art. (I’m guessing you clocked this before I did.) I discovered it during the swooning spiritual experience of watching the DVD of Passing …
I spent the first part of this week in Sacramento, where I gave a talk to a statewide “arts visioning retreat,” an audience of about a hundred artists and administrators who wanted to help lead a conversation about reframing the arts’ public purpose. (Download my brief introduction and keynote at California Arts Advocates’ Web site.) …