Tag: religion
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Unbelieving
I was about six the first time it dawned on me to ask my fifteen-year-old brother who the man on a stick he wore so conspicuously around his neck was. This was before the phrase “personal savior” had entered the public lexicon, so he explained to me the long way around that Jesus was a…
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What I Hate
This is a thing that has been making the rounds on Facebook among some people that I know: The Democrat [sic] Party is the world’s most successful hate group. It attracts poor people who hate rich people, black people who hate white people, gay people who hate straight people, feminists who hate men, environmentalists who hate the internal…
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How Phyllis Schlafly Made Me a Feminist
During my very brief stint just out of high school as an evangelical Christian, I tried with the committed desperation of the newly converted to coax my parents to church so they too could receive the Good News Of Jesus Christ. My father was immovable. My mother, who for years had attended seven a.m. Mass…
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A Primer on Persecution
Even as I type this presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz are off to Kentucky to console jailed county clerk Kim Davis in her hour of despair, yet another victim in the relentless assault on religious liberty waged by unsavory political and judicial elements in the United States. For those who haven’t been following…
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Macro San Miguel
I’ve always found something simultaneously appealing and off-putting about California missions. The architecture nestles with organic seamlessness into the surrounding environment (aesthetic intent as necessity, perhaps, since at the time local building materials were likely the only viable option, but still). On the other hand there’s the way they were built and maintained: typically with indigenous laborers who, even if they came…
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Noah
I probably wouldn’t have gone to see Noah if Darren Aronofsky’s name hadn’t been associated with it. When I was six an older brother’s well-intentioned attempts to introduce me to Jesus ushered me into the dark world of night terrors and panic attacks (“They nailed him to what? And put a spear where? And it was my fault?”).…
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New Camoldoli Hermitage
I had been looking forward to a few days alone at New Camaldoli with unseemly eagerness. When August arrived I had a broken elbow, a dodgy lower back, and a fretful elderly mother who thought I was going specifically so I’d be out of her cell phone range. I spent the week restless and preoccupied.…
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Monastic Meditations
The New Camaldoli hermitage perches atop a mountain just south of Big Sur. The dozen or so Benedictine monastics who call the hermitage home earn a portion of their living from fruit and date nut cakes and a small bookstore and gift shop. But their primary source of income is a retreat house and guest…
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