Search Results for:

Contact For 1800-299-7264 Flight Booking American Airlines

Useless and Useful: A True Sage Reviews The Tao of Happiness

…is about one animal metamorphosing into another animal. Lin titles it “The Flight of the Peng Bird.” This is his version: In the Northern Sea, there is a giant fish. Its name is Kun. Its size is incredibly large. No one knows how many thousands of miles its length measures. The Kun fish is able to transform into a bird, known as Peng. The Peng bird is also incredibly large. No one knows how many thousands of miles its wingspan measures. Peng chang…

Read More

Why Belief in the Primacy of Language Leads to a Misunderstanding of Richard Dawkins, Islamophobia, and Politics

…a bat?, we immediately come upon the problem of differences— —right, a bat flight simulator! But one of the things that we need to recognize is that . . . human beings experience their worlds very differently. I’m very interested in the phenomenon of disagreement. What does it mean when two people look at the same information and they come to different conclusions? To me, that is in some way indexing how deeply ingrained our affective experiential…

Read More

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Blames Gays For ISIS; ‘Christian Nationalist’ Sworn In As Guatemala’s President; Vatican Resists Civil Unions in Italy; Global LGBT Recap

…I to judge?” statement while aboard the papal plane. Since that fateful in-flight press conference, I have been told countless times (often by well-meaning, heterosexual Catholics) that I should find hope and comfort in the pope because he has opened up the doors to mercy for me and my lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer friends. But mercy, it seems to me, is not the door that LGBTQ people need opened to them. Mercy is an act of love, co…

Read More

Moral Mondays: The Battle For Justice Cannot Be Waged Only in the Courts

On a warm day in July 2013, I found myself on the wrong end of a canceled flight out of RDU Airport. I used the opportunity to travel into downtown Raleigh to observe one of the early Moral Monday rallies at the State Capitol. The gathering was ostensibly called to protest the legislature’s newly gerrymandered district map – among the most tortured in the nation. I expected to find a group of committed, passionate citizens (mostly people of color…

Read More

Rage Against the New Age Machine: Three Days at the Osho International Meditation Resort

…before I “lost” the group at the Mumbai airport. After the nearly day-long flight, we still had a four-hour bus ride ahead of us. When we finally found each other, boarded the bus and found boxed breakfasts of chicken salad sandwiches, I relaxed a bit. That was premature. The bus driver went in circles, clocking eight hours to travel 95 miles. Arriving at Osho, my only goal was sleep. But the registrar at the Welcome Center had other plans. First…

Read More

Updated with Audio: Secular Good, Muslim Bad: Unveiling Tunisia’s Revolution

…rdes in check. I say “probably” because indeed we did: Tunisia was a close American ally in the war on terror, much as we cozy up, time and time again, to vile leaders who use the Islamist bogeyman to crack down on human rights for those human types. Too often, secular regimes in the Muslim world are not democratic. Their secularism is itself an imposition, and often a violent one. Turkey is an instructive example (trivial tidbit: Tunisia’s flag i…

Read More

Pope Francis Dismisses Condoms in AIDS Fight

…no such compassion for those living with HIV/AIDS when asked on his return flight from his African visit if the church should change its prohibition on condom use given the continued spread of the virus. Francis replied with an obtuse mixture of parable and exegesis that made it clear he saw little flexibility in the teaching: The question seems too small to me. It seems to me also like a partial question. The morality of the church is found on th…

Read More

“We Found My Father, Except for His Hand”

…y of their places of murder. What would I have found in Srebrenica? But my flight arrived too late. Although we had access, we would’ve arrived well after the commemorations, and may have missed the chance to meet the people who needed to be talked to—by then many would’ve been on the return trip to Sarajevo. More than that, in the face of the thousands making the return trip before nightfall, we may have been forced to spend the night. Bosnia has…

Read More

Coming Out on a Christian Campus, Then and Now

…a boy—that dunk in the cold baptistery during a gospel revival was more a flight from hell and from my growing sense of sexual difference than a spiritual conviction. After taking the bread and wine that Sunday at Trinity United Methodist Church in Austin’s Hyde Park, I couldn’t get up. I knelt at the altar rail and wept, shaking, still not believing in a God or a community that would accept me just as I am, rather than just how others wanted and…

Read More

Why Evolution Should Be Taught in Church

…ol, to be shut out in the dark, to drift, to face the abyss with no armor. Flight is an utterly human response to mystery. But sometimes the need for control, absolutes, and knowledge careens out of control. To wit: Those who desire to have creationism taught in our nation’s public schools. They know, because the Bible says so; and what’s more, they know so well that they’re going to take control of the educations not only of their own children, b…

Read More