I Remember by Nima
Nima, one of my former students, took a “Writing as a Spiritual Practice” class with me and one evening we explored the theme of memory. Now a fourth-year medical student, Nima wrote this recollection of…
Category: Activists
You Have To Be Ready For Ridicule by Ed Sanders
Leonardo packing up the Mona Lisa in 1516 to live near the King of France You have to be ready for ridicule The plane plops on the beach in 1903 after just a minute You…
For Amal and Amal
The enemy is all about erasure Tactics: derision and denial Insults and salt in the wounds When you’re a student of history It’s no surprise— That’s what the powerful do So tell them over and…
Word of the Day: Apokatastasis
Allen Ginsberg: …The conditions of revolution in late twentieth century are conditions unforeseen by any other civilization. We are going to the moon, we have drugs that go to the moon inside, we’ve recovered the…
Crosses, Values, Options
1. “Really living like Christ will not mean reward, social recognition and an assured income, but difficulties, discrimination, solitude, anxiety. Here, too, the basic experience of the cross applies: the wider we open our hearts…
People Power, Then and Now
1. To advocate human conversation as the means to restore hope to the future is as simple as I can get. But I’ve seen that there is no more powerful way to initiate significant change…
An Exemplar of Gramsci’s “Optimism of the Will”
My optimism rests on my belief in the infinite possibilities of the individual to develop non-violence. The more you develop it in your own being, the more infectious it becomes till it overwhelms your surroundings…
Take Your Pick/2
Pascal raised the question: How do you know whether God exists? He said, if I assume that he exists and he does, I’ll make out OK. If he doesn’t, I won’t lose anything. If he…
“We’re Proud to be St. Louis Grown”
I was just visiting with my friend Suzanne Renard at Park Avenue Coffee She told me that her relatives in France decry that she lives in “the most evil city in the world”–Saint Louis Evil…
Weekend Meditation
A recent conversation with Sharifa led me to look again at one of Said’s many penetrating studies… 1. In fact, there is no way that I know of apprehending the world from within American culture…