Religion Dispatches
…e. So I think about the Joan Osborn song. What would you ask, if you had just one question? I’ve thought about it before. And I’ve thought about it a lot. Still nothing comes to mind just yet. Last year, when a friend of mine who lives in Madinah solicited prayers from people before her fourth or fifth hajj, (because, as she said, “It really works”), I asked for a house by the beach with the mortgage already paid! I mean, if you’re going to ask, m…
Read More…at the time. His mother, poor, ill, and struggling with drugs and booze, lost him and his sister to the county some time later. I doubt very much that as she sank into the arms of addiction that she took notice of one election after another, of one economic setback after another, of torture and Katrina and corruption and the undermining of civil liberties. I am sure that she had no idea that Democrat after Democrat was reviled as weak on terror; t…
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…ill can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law,” the physicist Stephen Hawking writes in The Grand Design, his latest bestseller, co-written with Leonard Mlodinow, “so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is an illusion.” Similarly, the neuroscientist Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, contends in his new book The Moral Landscape that “no account of causality leaves room for free will.” He ad…
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…oking up an old flame or your teenage dream à la Katy Perry is just the first step down the road to perdition — especially if your home life isn’t exactly what it used to be. What is interesting to me is that the conservative Christian cry used to be stop watching porn on the internet, or that your kids would be pimped out on the internet by perverts. Now, social media has become the latest “sinful” activity. Perhaps Rev. Miller should get on the…
Read More…ly clicked on it. I was surprised when I saw this wasn’t a clip of his latest hysterical stand up, but an essay he penned for the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog. The topic of his essay was how he came to be an atheist. The whole piece is here. While there is humor in the piece, it’s actually more of a sweet thoughtful response to all the people who ask him and other atheists why they don’t believe in God. And as my husband noticed, Gervais i…
Read More…myself for one of the tarawih. I finally finished the Qur’an reading I had started last year and decided that now I’m at the point where it will take two years to read through. To be merciful with our aging is like Allah’s mercy with those parents: it’s a part of the Divine nature and I am grateful. Finally, and of course unique for this year, I learned that it is possible to blog your way through Ramadan, sharing many ideas along the way, and yet…
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…ral Essex, arrived while I was mulling over a question Parker Palmer had posted just a bit earlier on his Facebook page about the relationship between violent words and images in broadcast media and violent acts. I’d added my two cents to the developing conversation, citing Douglas Rushkoff’s quip that “They don’t call it ‘programming’ for nothing,” and noting that the unreflective consumption of media is a characteristic of the Broadcast Age that…
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…. What was once considered intimate is now shared among millions with a keystroke.” Stengel further suggests that “the way we connect with one another and with the institutions in our lives is evolving.” Who we are, how we relate to others, and our places within larger social structures are going through a profound shift in light of the technologies of new media—but also in social institutions at all levels. Pope Benedict XVI apparently agrees, (a…
Read More…y for them, Marriott guests will still be able to enjoy the Book of Mormon stashed in the nightstand drawer in Marriott hotel rooms, courtesy of the mega-Mormon Marriott family.) The hotel chain says that the decision is economic: in-room porn profits have tanked because the porn industry has moved on-line. But it’s being reported that the move is actually an effort to protect Romney against another round of flak from socially conservative and…
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…e wrote to the Philippians (4:13) saying, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’” A comment from Charity enthuses, “When things begin to seem really dark, God always sends a light to show us the way! Lila, you are a tremendous inspiration.” Commenter Mika’l Qualls is reminded “of Corrie Ten Boom and others like her… I feel better going to sleep at night, knowing that God has someone in place who is on the frontlines fighting agai…
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