Please see the new page (link here) for a haiku a day. Toward the end of 2020, during the Christian season of Advent, my sister Deb and I determined to write a haiku each day until Christmas. We shared those with each other along the way, in the process sharing a fragment of a moment …
It’s official! A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible hits shelves both virtual and real, February 2021. I’m happy to say that even ahead of publicaion, it’s received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and some nice remarks (calling it “insightful and instructive”) from the Library Journal. Published by Oxford University Press, …
The old silver maple between kitchen and pond is slowly giving up its branches to others’ uses — woodpeckers and rodents inclined to hibernate, the complex dust of compost. And to us. Storms lop limbs like tantrum-ing spirits winging through the yard. A few hours without power, but a whole heap of firewood remains. As …
I’m so sick of the gun lobby. So sick of the argued “right to bear” automatic assault rifles by any idiot Tom, Dick, or Harry. I am brokenhearted by the school shooting in Connecticut, and that just the most recent. It is stupidly, ridiculously easy for anybody to buy a concealable and/or mass-murdering firearms. And …
Water. Out of the great rivers long ago, mermen of a kind — the Seven Sages — emerged. It was they, ancient Mesopotamians told, who brought the gifts of civilization to humankind. But water was also the amniotic soup of chaos. Only after a god-hero split the sea monster Tiamat in two was life on …
Maybe we could call it a grategy, though that lacks the melody of its sentiment. I had the rare opportunity yesterday to hear Gary Snyder, Pulitzer-prize winning poet, essayist, and sometime Buddhist with an environmental ethic seamlessly integrated into his daily practice. (He’s been living off the grid for decades, now, e.g.) He’s also got …
What if Jesus has already come back or is even coming back all the time? That the first generation of Jesus’ followers expected the Parousia or “second coming” during their own lifetimes is certain. They were sure, based on Jesus’ teachings and their own, first-hand knowledge of him that it would happen. At least that’s how the …
CNN published an essay I wrote but with edits that got it wrong. Unintentionally, I’m sure, but it says exactly what I’ve been arguing against. I disagree with both the title and the final sentence, arguably the most powerful parts. Neither of them are mine. Nevertheless, the essay concludes with the mandatory disclaimer that “The …
We enjoyed a wonderful dinner with a dear friend this weekend, a UVA professor, now in his 90s. Mr. Mead taught music out of his academic and professional expertise, and he continues to conduct a seminar for a few lucky seniors to explore contemporary issues in study and conversation. Over the decades, Mr. Mead has not only instructed …
“The language of God,” Biblical Hebrew. I’m off soon to teach our third week’s class, and we’re in the thick of it now. The alphabet (or aleph-bet) is kind of fun — little ditties, the novelty of recognizing letters completely different from what we see in English, of reading from right to left. But the …
The Particular Exasperations of Learning Biblical Hebrew Read More »
