If we spend our life looking for the eye of the hurricane, we live a life that is fruitless. We die without having really lived. No one can know what life is. But we can experience life directly. Only that is given to human beings. Life is not a safe space. It never was,…
I believe there is no ultimate meaning outside of humankind, no final answer to be discovered which provides a certain anchor, a firm grounding, a robust assurance that “all will be well” and that all human suffering is justified. Life itself is change; life is recognized by our self-awareness and reason in the form…
I believe human freedom is narrowly circumscribed, channeled, confined by genetic inheritance, by the resources available for clothing, shelter, nourishment, safety, and above all shaped — by the values absorbed from the birth family, and mores of the zeitgeist into which I was born. None of these factors were and are, within my discretion….
I mentioned that in graduate school that one requirement for graduation was that I compose a essay addressing the foundational belief commitments that I held at the time. A friend suggested that I post that statement. so I retrieved an age-tinged copy composed on a typewriter in 1983. I confess that I still hold…
Today Western imperialism is the imperialism of relativism, of the “it all depends on your point of view”; it’s the eye-rolling or the wounded indignation at anyone who’s stupid, primitive, or presumptuous enough to still believe in something, to affirm anything at all. No social order can securely found itself on the principle that…
Parents are generally anxious about really big things like melting ice caps and collapsing economy and unending stories about violence and predators and college admissions…. They displace all of these fears of things they cannot control onto the one thing they believe they can control, which is children. —-excerpt Wendy Mogel, The Blessing Of…
Many years ago, when in graduate school, I was asked to write a Credo, a concise statement of the core principles of my life. This was a good exercise for anyone intent upon earning a degree. After all what has one really learned from the exercise of education, — hours spent listening to passionate…
Memory is a strange thing. Yesterday I dedicated enough time to sort through the folders of legal, financial and administrative paperwork archived on occasion of the passing of my mom and more recently my sister. There seemed to be a lot of evidence for events that were sudden and still feel less than real,…
Yesterday was really cold, bone chilling cold. Desiring to move about, we decided to visit the Japanese Tea Garden on the Fabyan estate, a short drive by car from our home. After all the sun was out, the trees, stone lantern, and moon bridge would be spectacular with a cover of snow. Yes, the…
I am always surprised at how quickly things can snap out of control. I remember that summer afternoon. The image remains; seated in the warm sun, basking in the hospitality of the backyard of two friends. Jim was a traveling salesperson. He traveled from North Carolina to the Midwest, peddling sets of wooden-handled screw…
