Religion Dispatches
…, “lament is the language of suffering.” Kendrick wants to “get God on the phone” but, just as in the Book of Lamentations, God remains silent. But that doesn’t stop Kendrick from baring his soul, Why you wanna see a good man with a broken heart? Once upon a time I used to go to church and talk to God Now I’m thinkin’ to myself, hollow tips is all I got There’s nothing quite as audacious as calling God a liar or suggesting that communing with this…
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…r, unnecessary, and unacceptable spectacle of a hanging captured on a cell phone. If there is something that should distinguish us from those dictators who have corrupted our world, it must be here. In humility before death. In appreciation of our common humanity. In the sense that the universe is infused with a law and a purpose that makes our lives and hopes sacred, and which, from time to time, turns against those who offend it, to remind us th…
Read More…ish memorial chapels in and around New York City openly offer cremation in phone conversations. Researching this article, I discovered that cremation was a part of the recent history of my own family. Cremation has inarguably become a part of contemporary Jewish life, perhaps for the better. “I just don’t feel it’s right that the dead should take up space on the planet that could be used for the living,” explains Linda Winters, sixty-eight, a reti…
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…n bed on Sunday morning, reading the news about the Orlando shooting on my phone. In the wake of the tragedy, I have found myself mostly at a loss for words, stuttering between anger and sadness. I can not fully describe what I was feeling and thinking that morning as I was getting ready to head over to the LA Pride parade—even as news came in of an arrest in Santa Monica, earlier in the day, of a heavily armed man who was supposedly en route to t…
Read More…ll use the term “mix tape”?) While she’s out and completely unreachable by phone, her dad, Ken, goes into the hospital with breathing difficulties and is admitted to intensive care. Taylor finally gets the message, is stricken with remorse and concern, prays for her dad’s healing, and resolves to be more responsible. My Dinner with Frankie: Mark and Cheryl Perry invited their teenage daughter Olivia’s friend Frankie over for dinner. Since Olivia h…
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…obody can deny the convenience of ready access to information, maps, phone numbers, calendars, and social satisfaction that our reliance on technology provides. Technology is a tool, right? It doesn’t change who we are, right? It doesn’t blind us—it reveals reality by connecting us and showing us the world via our screens… right? Look, I know that our new imaginative, mediated work is doing good. I know people can feel a real sense of empowerment…
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…ing up. The narrow stairway of our fifth story walk-up is pitch black. Our phones have no signal, which means no AP alerts, no Facebook, no Twitter—and no way to contact friends and family. Except for the radio, we’re cut off. And so is everyone else in the mass of humanity that lives and works below 39th Street. In the afternoon, after the worst of Sandy has departed for the north, I walk across Avenue B again into the Red zone. Some time during…
Read More…especially, race. This matrix of associations is evident in the example of phone psychics like “Miss Cleo,” who uses an affected Caribbean accent. We also saw it in Pat Robertson’s gaffe following the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010, when he claimed that the nation of Haiti had made a pact with the Devil. Glassman conforms to no stereotypes about Vodou. Born in Maine, her parents were of Ukrainian Jewish heritage but were not religious. S…
Read More…ps believe are against Islam. The LGBT activists’ deaths bring to nine the number of high-profile people hacked to death in Bangladesh in 2016. As the list expands, so do the reasons individuals are targeted — from religious beliefs, to blogging and organizing a movement against radical political groups, to engaging in cultural activities, and now LGBT activism. HRW says the police are implicated in anti-LGBT persecution: The National Human Rights…
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…verything we’ve been doing for the last 10 years,” Sinno says, speaking by phone from a recent tour stop in San Francisco. “A big part of what we do and why we address politics and gender and class and whatever – be that through our music and through our positions in the public eye – a big part of that is about trying to create sort of a cultural roster for people to identify with and feel emboldened by. And it felt like for a few days, we had to…
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