Religion Dispatches
…ucation in the United States. Consider the Insight Meditation Society, the San Francisco Zen Center, and Shambhala Mountain Center, each of which attract thousands of visitors every year for programs of contemplative practice and study. Consider Maitri Compassionate Care in San Francisco, a very early North American AIDS hospice established by the late Issan Dorsey of the Hartford Street Zen Center. Consider the Prison Dharma Network and the Natio…
Read More…y P. Delight and other members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the San Francisco-based performance art / political activism / social service troupe. In the Name Of is a Polish movie about a Catholic priest wrestling with sexual temptations. It won the Teddy award for best LGBT-themed movie at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. On the festival website, producer Peter L. Stein writes, “In the Name Of is a touching exploration of the boundarie…
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…73 San Francisco story looks not unlike the 1970s TV series The Streets of San Francisco, while the 2114 sets are a combination of Blade Runner and the Matrix trilogy, and the 1849 set is a bit Master and Commander with some Amistad thrown in. The mixing of times and stories meshes with a mixing of production styles, all overlaid with a mixing of myths. As all myths are already mashups, Cloud Atlas rewrites the mythologies large, from South Asian…
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…llar annual budget is funded almost exclusively by ticket sales, and these tickets are not cheap (ranging this year, for example, from $210-$300 depending on time of purchase). This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various parti…
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…cost of true discipleship. The price it was called upon to pay was all too cheap…We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale; we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition…Was there ever a more terrible and disastrous instance of Christianizing the world than this? It’s regrettable, I think, that “cheap grace” has turned into a kind of meme that Rod Dreher can toss into his debate with Andrew Sullivan without…
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…rs, it doesn’t show that the religious right is dead because it has lost a number of figureheads from the 1970s; it shows just how successful it has been in creating a diverse bench of “anointed” leaders. When a presidential candidate reaches out to them, it shows how Doug Wead’s 1985 advice to George H.W. Bush has become a standard blueprint for winning the GOP nomination and even the presidency. His one thousand targets, though, have multiplied….
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…35-year-old woman, Ashli Babbitt, had flown to Washington from her home in San Diego at the behest of Donald Trump who urged his supporters to interfere with the electoral vote tally. She had served for twelve years, including being a security guard for US Air Force bases, and had risen to the rank of Senior Airman. Her husband, who remained in San Diego, described her as an enthusiastic supporter of the President, but not emotionally unstable. Li…
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…a random sample size and therefore isn’t statistically representative. The number of individuals reporting victimization in Episcopal spaces is alarming nonetheless. However, I would argue the data is more likely to under- than to overestimate the scope of the abuse that occurs. To see why, the survey results must be interpreted in light of the Episcopal Church’s larger culture of inaction around sexual violence. See no evil, hear no evil… LGBTQ+…
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…hands-off approach to reported apparitions, at least in the U.S. As a diocesan archivist in Sacramento told me, when I telephoned to ask about a vision event in the Mojave Desert, “it’s nothing we’re trained about.” They get a half-dozen letters or emails every year from folks claiming they’ve seen “Christ in a marshmallow,” he added, and as far as he’s concerned, a report of apparitions is a “non-event.” Perhaps Sacramento isn’t keeping up with p…
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…n New York City, I would light a candle at the memorial and keep vigil. In San Francisco, I pray in a room lit only by a streetlamp, filled with sadness for those who have died in America, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, and apprehension at the terrorism-related deaths to come. Our work as Americans and Muslims is far from done. The next morning, all I want to do is read news articles and listen to NPR, but the baby is grouchy, refusin…
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