Cheer Up
The first sign that you are becoming religious is that you are becoming cheerful. When a woman is gloomy, that may be dyspepsia, but it is not religion…. To the yogini everything is bliss; every…
Kristen’s Handout on Rabi’a for Week #2 on Islamic Mystical Experience
Sessions on the Liberative Potentials of Islamic Mystical Experience with Kristen Andersen Week 2: Rabi’a O my Lord, Thou knowest that the desire of my heart is to obey Thee, and that the light of…
Hanan al-Shaykh’s “The Story of Zahra” (Arab Writers in Translation Reading Circle)
Friends, Our novel this month is by Lebanese writer, Hanan al-Shaykh, The Story of Zahra. Hala Abdelaziz will facilitate our discussion. We meet on Wednesday 27 June from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the Center for…
Perspective
Once an aging actress told [Abbé] Mugnier, “When I pass in front of my mirror, I cry out, ‘How beautiful I am!’ Is that a sin?” “No,” murmured the abbé, “It’s only an error.” –From…
Be in Love with Yr Chilean Life
Mary Shannon studied with me last year when she was a freshman at SLU. This year she has been in Chile in a program Katie Schlechter and Cheryl Sullivan experienced a while back. Mary just …
Islamic Mysticism and Liberation: Rabi’a, Rumi, and Malcolm X
I am a big proponent of “Share the wealth.” Accordingly, I have asked our friend Kristen Andersen to share her important work on Islamic mysticism and liberation, the subject of her Master’s thesis in theological…
A Request from Haiti
A friend in Haiti asked me to send her the following passage from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and now I want to reread the whole novel again! Later, after getting used to Alyosha, Pyotr Alexandrovich…
The Wedding—
with its three major conflicts brewing (“you’re on my side, aren’t you?”) and seven minor ones simmering (“he was a loser then, he’s even worse now”) the bride’s burning eyes (“there’s only one way to…
I Blame Jonathan Richman
I had to take out A restraining order On “that summer feeling” It’s been haunting me
At My Wake, Someone Will Hear Someone Else Say…
“He was always telling me to share my writing…” “You, too? He said that to me, like… weekly!” “Weekly? He’d badger me daily for a fortnight until I gave up.” “He was relentless.” “Verdad. Yep,…