Prologue: In the Valley of the Shadow I have been affected most profoundly by several things of late. First of all was being present to observe the moment of release from my own bondage to fear, when I was told the endometrial biopsy and pap had both come back negative. Clean, clear — the joy [...]

Because when His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama speaks — the world listens.* Facebook | Dalai Lama: An Ethical Approach to Environmental Protection. + — always excepting China, which has been tone deaf even in the best of times, and the USA, which either listens or doesn’t, depending on whether it’s an election year.

I found this quote this morning and it seemed to speak aptly to what I would see as core conservative ideology: The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past. –Robertson Davies Doesn’t that sound like modern political conservatives? Never look to the [...]

Today’s thought from AmidaBuddha.org is worthy of further contemplation: It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions. – T.H. Huxley

Originally written and published in May 2005. On stem cells, roses, and the fallacies inherent in the “culture of life” philosophy. All life has intrinsic value. I was inspecting our new roses this weekend, removing pests, fertilizing the soil after this month’s nearly incessant rains, removing any weeds lest the beautiful, fragrant flowering hedge in [...]

Humans, thinking, and consciousness all evolve — and our religion and politics must evolve with it. Time to examine the other side of the “political theology” debate and check in with Rousseau and The Savoyard Vicar. Section III: The Inner Light. My favorite quote from this section of Professor Lilla’s essay goes like this: “There [...]

I finished Neil Gaiman’s American Gods at about 1:30 this morning. I adore “page turners” like this, though I have to say this is the most singular “page turner” I’ve ever encountered. As readers of this blog will probably know, all meaning is context bound, and contexts are endless. Here’s mine: When this book was [...]

In this next section on the essay adapted from “The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West,” by Professor Mark Lilla of Columbia University, we examine the impulses that separated man from God, and secular politics from religion. Section II: The Great Separation. For those who study the evolution of human consciousness, this could [...]

“The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West,” by Professor Mark Lilla of Coilumbia University is to be published next month but the points he raises therein should have been in mainstream consciousness years ago. The essay from yesterday’s New York Times begins with “The twilight of the idols has been postponed.” That in [...]

With a farewell speech that contained searing attacks on capitalism, Marxism, birth control, sex, drugs and “lax morals,” Pope Benedict XVI has deeply underscored his church’s irrelevancy to Latin American Catholics and proved how out of touch he is with God’s movement in modern times. By all accounts Joseph Ratzinger was and is a highly [...]