December 2010
82 posts
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Weighing WikiLeaks' "Uncomfortable Truths" and...
by Nancy Rosenbaum, producer
Julian Assange of WikiLeaks speaks at the Hack in the Box security conference in Kuala Lumpur in 2009. (photo: Daryl Yeoh / Flickr, released under a Creative Commons 2.0 license)
WikiLeaks’ founder Julie Assange published an editorial in The Australian yesterday. In “Don’t shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths” he presents...
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How We Wait
by Peter A. Friedrichs, guest contributor
Awaiting Tiana’s Showboat Jubilee at Disneyland. (photo: huffmans/Flickr)
Advent is a time of waiting. For Christians, it’s a time of waiting for the arrival of the Christ child. For others, Advent is a time of waiting for a hoped-for future, waiting for the time of bleakness to pass and for new joy to arrive.
We spend a lot of our time waiting...
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The Poetry of Advent in Doubt and Depression: My...
by Luke Hankins, guest contributor
For me, Advent means that God is coming into your life — is already there, in fact, has always been there, but you are about to experience that fact in an unprecedented way. I have come to view my experience of losing my faith and falling into anxiety and depression, into fear of damnation, into hopelessness, as being God’s advent into my life.
My first...
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The (Advent) Road Between "Already" and "Not Yet"
by Debra Dean Murphy, guest contributor
The Advent tension is a way of learning again that God is God: that between even our deepest and holiest longing and the reality of God is a gap which only grace can cross. —Rowan Williams, A Ray of Darkness
I’ve been reading Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel The Road this Advent, and am struck by some thematic parallels between this ...
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Photos of Contrasting Similarities
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Sometimes the most striking sequences present themselves in the most unexpected places, non? Two of my favorite Tumblrs — Been Thinking and Destin a Terre — posted these photos within seconds of each other and showed up on our Being Blog dashboard exactly in this order.
The scenes couldn’t be more different in temperature and climate and condition, but the...
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A Visual Feast at Dan Barber's Blue Hill at Stone...
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
After hearing chef Dan Barber describe his dishes as “unconstructed,” we wanted to experience the beauty that he and so many other people describe. Unfortunately, we’re based in Minnesota and we’re a public radio gig, which means we don’t quite have the funds to fly to the Pocantico Hills for a gourmet meal. Fortunately, we found a set...
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“When the play [“Waiting for Godot”] was first performed, one of the...”
– — Michael Krasny, excerpted from a great interview with Lisa Webster who interviewed him about his newly released book, Spiritual Envy: An Agnostic’s Quest for Religion Dispatches.
I’m truly looking forward to reading this one.
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
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The Fundamental Tension between Stories and...
by Shubha Bala, associate producer
My favorite dog-earred, page-stained book growing up was The Phantom Tollbooth. I must have read over 40 times about Milo’s quest through the Kingdom of Wisdom to reconcile the rulers of Dictionopolis, the lover of words, and Digitopolis, the lover of numbers. The conclusion of this book, and of John Allen Paulos’ recent post in The New York...
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WatchTransgender Male Athlete Plays for NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Team: From Kay-Kay to Kye
by Nancy Rosenbaum, producer
George Washington University point guard Kye Allums recently made headlines as the first known transgender student to play NCAA Division I college basketball. At a press conference held last month, Allums announced: “I am a transgender male, which means...
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The December Dilemma of Accepting Christmas
by Adena Cohen-Bearak, guest contributor
A Phoenix man celebrates the holidays with Chinese food and a lit Christmas tree/Chanukah bush in the background. (photo: Daniel Greene/Flickr)
Chanukah begins on Wednesday night this year. Tonight. December 1st. Yes, it is confusing. Even we Jews are confused. Why — everyone is wondering — does Chanukah coincide with Christmas some years and, in other...
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A Well-Rehearsed Ritual
by Anna Lawrence Pietroni, guest contributor
A Christmas tree stands a month after Christmas last year. Ashley, who had recently overcame thyroid cancer, kisses her son Trey, who was undergoing treatment for tuberculosis. (photo: Fred Erlenbusch/Flickr)
Advent Tea was invented by my mother 40 years ago. My brothers were young and knocking over furniture in their pre-Christmas fervor. Mom needed...
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A Chanukah Dilemma: Can Dreidels and Gelt...
by Rabbi Rebecca Schorr, guest contributor
Second-grade students from a public school in New York play with dreidels and gelt after lighting the menorah at the Eldridge St. Synagogue. (photo: Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)
Each December, parents at my children’s public school are asked to contribute candy or small toys that will be used to fill the children’s Christmas stockings. During our first...
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Fall on Central Park West
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Winter has already taken root here in Minneapolis, but I haven’t let go of autumn yet. So I just couldn’t resist reblogging a small portion of this wonderful series of autumn photos by Jamie on her From Me to You blog, which she introduced with the caption: “As November slips away the last leaves fall on Central Park West making way for the winter air and ...
November 2010
43 posts
6 tags
The First Baby Shower Unites Women on the Margins
by Onleilove Alston, guest contributor
A statuette of the Virgin Mary in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. (photo: Michael O’Donnell/Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons)
This Advent I am reminded of the meeting Mary had with Elizabeth to announce she was with child. Though this could have been a time of anxiety for Mary, with Elizabeth it became a time of celebration. I playfully call the...
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“I found this a difficult as well as instructive debate (that occasionally left...”
– — Lawyer and social critic Wendy Kaminer writes in The Atlantic about her debate with Femi Otitoju, a British equality campaigner and diversity consultant, on the moral limits of free speech.
Kaminer’s essay is a provocative and challenging perspective that really makes the reader think. I...
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A Devotional Exercise in Harmony and Meditation...
by Jessica Kramer, guest contributor
“Mom’s birthday breakfast” (photo: Jessica Kramer/Flickr)
Christmas is almost upon us. In seeking God during this time, I have sought renewal in the darkness of winter, in the stillness in which to hear God. This fourth week of Advent brings promise of harmony, that the (often disjointed) pieces of our lives, hearts, and emotions might be...
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WatchBollywood Squares: The Manganiyar Seduction at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
“They have the Muslim saints and they worship Allah. And then they also have their … Hindu goddesses. And they sing to both. Like, there would not be any difference if they were to sing a Sufi Islam mystic song or if they were to sing a Hindu mystic song. It...
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Visual Inspiration: "Human Tapestry"
by Marsha Glazière, guest contributor
“Human Tapestry” is a three-dimensional painting running on and off the canvas that measures 6 feet high by 16 feet wide by 24 inches deep. The work is visual prospect for international peace and the continuation of life on our shared planet.
Eleven life-sized figures represent various countries and political ideologies. Each is draped in her own flag, her...
