Ordinary people have to live their lives on an ordinary personal level; there are decencies and betrayals, judgments and perceptions which persist above or below whatever political circumstances exist or whatever social changes come into force. and these are the stuff of the ordinary moral life. ….because the everyday moral worldis a matter of…
A subtext is a unifying thematic melody that extends underneath, present, intermittently sensible in a larger work. Seated at Starbucks reading silently Anthony O’Hear’s Science Art and the Human World, a challenging work of philosophy of science, a familiar tune playing on the PA came to my awareness. Along with the seasonal Christmas carols…
Scientific existence possesses its simplicity and aptness in that it relates to beings themselves in a distinctive way and only to them. Science would like to dismiss the nothing with a lordly wave of the hand. –*– Only when the strangeness of beings oppresses us does it arouse and evoke wonder. Only on…
Late in the afternoon a almost-winter sun glowed pink through hazy clouds, I walked across the parking lot at the Roadster Shop in Mundelein. Earlier in the day while at Starbucks Dan asked me if I had seen the Road Rage street rod which had been taken to the SEMA show? Dan is a…
Maturity beckons also, asking us to be larger, more fluid, more elemental, less cornered, less unilateral, a living conversational intuition between the inherited story, the one we are privileged to inhabit and the one, if we are large enough and broad enough, moveable enough and even, here enough, just, astonishingly, about to occur. –excerpt…
The source of this list has been lost. I cannot give attribution. I know that I am not the one who compiled these words. I think it is an act of resistance to share them in this era of disharmony, of unrestrained ego, of the illusion that conflict has a worthwhile outcome. Leadership demands…
Why is the Buddha depicted with a countenance of calm, exuding an inner peace with circumstances as they may be? Nirvana. Nirvana is described variously as a mind and heart that accepts things as they happen to be. I’ve never met anyone who has achieved that. A few individuals seemed closer than I to…
We are engulfed in an immense ancient indifference that does not sleep or dream. Call it Nature if you will, though everything that is is natural— the lignite-bearing earth, the factory, a darkness taller than the sky. This out-of-doors that wins our release and temporary peace— not because it is pristine or pretty, but…
The years click by, one becomes older, and things get worse. Many would agree with this generalization of their experience. If one is unlucky it would be difficult to see life otherwise , beset with chronic medical issues, and subject to the indignities of medicare for treatment. Luck counts for a great deal in…
What follows is a guest post……………………….. Friday morning our Newfoundland/Golden Retriever mix, Astrid, roused me from sleep nearly an hour earlier than I’d hoped to get up the day after Thanksgiving. She wanted to be let out, of course. So I growled to myself, stumbled downstairs into the dawn, opened the sliding door to…
