September 2011
71 posts
Anonymous asked: Nothing to ask. but a big THANK YOU.
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Strange Is American Religion, Stranger Is American...
by Tom Moore, guest contributor
photo: Helen Sotiriadis/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
“Where did you read the Bible?” she asked. My friend Karin used to teach religion in a Swedish public elementary school, which is why her question made so much sense to her but so little sense to me.
“In Europe,” she explained, “we see the clips of your news commentators, we see your President getting sworn in...
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“The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those...”
– —Thomas Jefferson, as excerpted from a letter to John Adams dated April 11, 1823
~reblogged by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
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“I know the country is open to a renaissance of spiritual-moral values, and the...”
– —David Hartman, Jewish philosopher and Orthodox rabbi
As this quotation from our interview with the unorthodox thinker indicates, Hartman’s is a voice that challenges all types of conventions. Our show with him is airing on more than 250 public radio stations across the U.S. this week and via...
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peelapom asked: Have you read the book "America's Four Gods: What We Say about God--and What That Says about Us" by Paul Froese and Christopher Bader? I'd love to see Krista dive into a conversation about this book and what the authors have to say! The book really changed how I understand religion and its influence on American culture as well as my own understanding of G!d/dess
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“I want to be alone and work until the day my heads hits the drawing table and...”
– —Maurice Sendak
The celebrated author of Where the Wild Things Are and other award-winning children’s literature just released Bumble-Ardy at the age of 83. He recently lost several loved ones, including his long-time partner, and shares his thoughts on opening up to his mortality with The...
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Working to Remember What You Love
by Susan Leem, associate producer
A biker’s view. (photo: Seth Werkheiser/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0
Is there a thing you used to love to do that you don’t do anymore?
Maybe on the way to work or home from work, for minutes or hours, all alone, at three in the morning, on fine sunny days, in howling winter wind? For me it was biking. I’m no aficionado, but from my teens to my 20s, I...
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Belonging to Each Other in Our Darkness: I Am...
by Sarah Stockton Howell, guest contributor
“Love” by Christopher Brown (Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Wednesday night at 11:08, the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis, a man widely believed to be innocent. A last-minute delay went to the Supreme Court, where a stay of execution was denied.
Meanwhile in Texas, another man was executed. There was no widespread outcry for the life of...
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“For those about to take my life, may God have mercy on your souls, may God bless...”
– —Troy Anthony Davis, speaking to the prison officials who executed him by lethal injection at 11:08 in a Georgia prison last night, according to an eyewitness account from an Associated Press reporter.
About the photo: A demonstrator outside the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in...
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Animated Shorts on the Lessons of Forgiveness and...
by Susan Leem, associate producer + Trent Gilliss, senior editor
The son of an Israeli nuclear physicist, the artist Hanan Harchol moved to the United States with his family when he was two years old. And it’s his father’s accent that Harchol impersonates and argues with in these two humorous and enlightening animated shorts for the High Holy Days.
But, these illustrated videos...
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“I know about leaving. People would say to me ‘If you don’t like it,...”
– —Tova Hartman, founder of Shira Hadasha, a modern Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Jerusalem that has no central leadership or rabbi, and permits women to lead services and bat mitzvah ceremonies.
Read Kevin Grant’s full article on The Huffington Post.
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
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Islam's Role in the Political Marketplace of...
by Mustafa Husayn Abu Rumman, special contributor
More than 80 participants attended the second northern women’s security shura on Monday in Mazar-e Sharif at Camp Marmal in Balk province, Afghanistan to discuss women’s roles in governance transition. (photo: DEU Capt. Jennifer Ruge)
As an imam at a mosque in the Jordanian capital Amman, I have been following the dramatic...
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The Stuff of Our Lives
by Susan Leem, associate producer
Photo by Robert Francis/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
The A&E television show Hoarders is hugely popular for so many reasons. Maybe we see our inner hoarder in their characters, or just want to be shocked at the sight of extreme stuff. But when writer Amy Gutman decided to declutter her storage space, she developed a fascinating idea about why our stuff is so...
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“I’m not sure Apple even thinks about the competition. They’re...”
– —Keith Yamashita, from “The Apple Effect” in Saturday’s Christian Science Monitor
How should we be “the most extreme version of ourselves” in our own work lives? If more of us lived out this philosophy on the job and perhaps in our personal lives, would we be better...
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Anonymous asked: I recall a broadcast about autism. the speaker related his experience with his son. I would like to read about this.
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“Had I gone looking for some particular place rather than any place, I’d have...”
– —William Least Heat-Moon
Blue Highways has to be one of the most profound literary travelogues I’ve ever read. It’s almost 20 years old now, but his portraits of America — its people and its geographies — remain unequaled and in the process he gives of himself. For all you Kerouac fans,...
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T'shuva: Recognizing Holiness
by Laura Hegfield, guest contributor
I was watching the gathering clouds and their shifting shadows on those familiar mountains for quite a while. I saw you, but it wasn’t until I turned and took a step that I could truly see you.
With an intake of breath, my heart expanded in awe, recognizing yours, so perfectly formed.
How many others had passed by without noticing? What if I had not...
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To Pray or Not to Pray? Civil Religion and the...
by Rick Elgendy, special contributor
U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama and former U.S. President George W. Bush and his wife Laura Bush observe a moment of silence at the time the first hijacked airliner crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center during the tenth anniversary commemoration of the September 11, 2001 attacks at the lower Manhattan site of the World...
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“With William James I met a finite god, which was a pleasure.”
– —David Hartman, Orthodox rabbi and philosopher who founded the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
We’re in the final throes of producing this stirring interview for release on September 20th. Hold on to your hats; it’s a dandy!
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
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Dancing the Stories of the Orishas
by Nancy Rosenbaum, producer
In Cuban Santeria (also known as La Regla Ocha and La Regla Lucumi), orishas are revered deities who rule over different earthly elements. They are called through dance and drum rituals to interact with humans.
Oshun, for example, is an orisha associated with fresh water. She represents female sensuality and beauty. Oshun’s movement is fluid and coquettish,...
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Finding Refuge in the Month of Elul
by Carly Lesser (Ketzirah), guest contributor
(photo: Love Fusion Photography by Kelsey/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
It’s Jewish tradition to read Psalm 27 daily during the month of Elul, which falls during August and September. In this month of Elul, we have no holidays. It’s the month where we are supposed to turn inward and prepare for the High Holy Days: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and...
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Communing with Beauty
by Rita G. Patel, guest contributor
“Beauty and Its Possibilities” by Rita Patel
The architect Christopher Alexander tells this story in The Timeless Way of Building:
I once saw a simple fish pond in a Japanese village which was perhaps eternal.
A farmer made it for his farm. The pond was a simple rectangle, about 6 feet wide, and 8 feet long; opening off a little irrigation stream....
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“If man’s vocation is to achieve pure joy through suffering, manual workers are...”
– —Simone Weil, French philosopher and activist
Peter Foges described Weil as “preternaturally a worker by brain, not by hand. Small, myopic, physically awkward and weak, it is difficult to think of anyone less suited to toil in a factory, workshop or field.” And yet she championed...
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The Moon Cake That Will Never Be Eaten
by Melody Ng, Public Insight Journalism analyst
Grandma May Ng holds her great-grandson Penuel. (photo: Melody Ng)
I don’t know that I have ever paid much attention to the
legend behind the Moon Festival, but I sure love moon cakes. I haven’t bought them in years, because my grandmother always sends me a box of my favorite — lotus seed paste (a thousand times yummier than the usual...
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Autumn Harvest Festival Pays Homage to the Moon
by Susan Leem, associate producer
The egg yolk inside the moon cake evokes the full harvest moon. (photo: Mike Clarke/AFP/Getty Images)
For many Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese, the moon festival or mid-autumn harvest festival falls on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. That is, today, September 12th, 2011.
Legend says the wife of a great archer flew to the moon after drinking a...
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Starbucks is giving out free coffee to everyone in... →
shortformblog:
On September 11, 2001, someone in the company infamously charged first responders $130 for three cases of water. The ambulance drivers were eventually paid back, but we wonder if that played a role in today’s gesture.
Atoning for a past mistake or an act of generosity, the intention is good, non?
~reblogged by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
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