Long ago Jesus talked about neighbors (Luke 10:25–37) and what a neighbor is. The answer was: everybody. That answer worked in the industrial world, but it is insufficient for our time and place. Take for example a few words from the University of Chicago professor of ethics Martha Nussbaum: New…

from Meditations:

If the search is for truth or Truth, the most sensible thing to do is search as many places as possible, right? You might think so. Yet how many people walk to particular drawers, pull them out, and only search for truth in one drawer. A drawer marked “Christianity” for…

The central concept in Humanism is that human beings can solve human problems. A simple example: a pile of dirty laundry. Facts about that pile include the fact that the objects in the pile were made by human beings and that someone made the pile. …

Yes, there is indeed a “Breathe with Me Barbie.” With — so the packaging says — “5 Guided Meditations.” Unlike the Minimum Wage Barbie (complete with McDonald’s uniform) and the Trailer Trash Barbie (sporting a beer bottle), this Barbie is a genuine, licensed Mattel product. I have to admit, one…

In his 1869 book Culture and Anarchy, the British cultural critic and poet Matthew Arnold expressed his fear that his contemporary Capitalist society that was — on the positive side — capable of creating “infinite commodities” was also creating — in the minus column — “incomplete and mutilated” human beings…

Do a web search on “true self” or “finding your true self” and what you will see are lots of articles with the word “myth” in the title. No, the search results are not lots of myths about people finding their true selves. Rather, the results are about how “the…

The massive presences of everything not there. Even angels in blue cower and worry their wings. This came to me as a pink Christmas ornament, round and with a sprinkle of silver glitter, trying to be falling snow. Country church, jutting steeple a perfection only symbols and rituals inscribed into time and…

I feel the welling up — once it was joy that came on like this, that came unexpected. Now it’s mixed: equal parts joy and loss — melancholy, I suppose. Hope, peace, joy. Love — names for advent candles. Despair, war, grief, hate — no candles for those. Yet they…