Oath of Disloyalty by Irwin Keller
Today I received the following in an email from Rabbi Lerner. I am a disloyal Jew. I am not loyal to a political party. Nor will I be loyal to dictators and mad kings. I…
Category: Activists
Thinking for Oneself (and Then There’s the “More Sophisticated”)
The audience I try to reach, and to some limited extent do reach, is a different one: partly, activists of a less doctrinaire sort than the mainstream liberal intelligentsia and sectarian Marxists, partly the kind…
“Surely, Thich Nhat Hanh Doesn’t Think that the Diamond Sutra Applies to Trump, ICE, and the Republicans!”
The Buddha said to Subhuti, “In a place where there is something that can be distinguished by signs, in that place there is deception. If you can see the signless nature of signs, then you…
Only Connect (and Hold It All)
Edward W. Said, Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews Edited by Gauri Viswanathan Pantheon Books (2001) With four friends (from St. Charles, Troy, and Los Angeles), I am reading and discussing the recently published collection of…
Arousing Enthusiasm: Allen the Talker
for Laura Lapinski, who makes me laugh while lunching at Medina Grill, walking around the CWE, and hanging out in Left Bank Books There’s 15 to 20 Allen Ginsberg poems I’ve loved, and shared with…
Assange by Andrew Wimmer
There are several journalists worth reading in order to understand what is happening with Julian Assange and what is at stake. I’d suggest, too, that you avoid all media coverage, at least until you have…
Share the Wealth with Andrew Wimmer: “Where Can I Invest My Life?”
As a young graduate student, I had the good fortune to be exposed to the thinking of Bernard Lonergan. Lonergan, who died in the mid-eighties, was a Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian. Many of my…
An Introduction to Simone Weil: Concentration Is Consecration–Spring Class 2019
Humanity is divided into two categories—the people who count for something and the people who count for nothing. To believe in God is not a decision that we can make. All we can do is…
The Way It Looked in 1987
A huge amount of work obviously remains to be done, and as the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza enters its third decade one realizes that the magnitude of liberation required can only…
The Long Trail behind You
Shirin Ebadi, with Azadeh Moaveni, Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope But a personal story is more powerful than any dry summary of why a given law should be changed. To attract people’s…