On the Boundaries

And so, with the “catless grin” hovering over us like an omen, let’s begin this journey with some background. Since the 19th century, science had affected the way people thought about themselves and their world.  Classical science, expressed especially in the monumental work of Newton, was confident of the essential finality of its achievements. Most…

This is an introduction of sorts to a blog which, if all goes well, will appear in several posts over the coming weeks.  I need to begin with a few caveats and acknowledgements: As no surprise to those who know me, I am not a scientist, never was one, and never claimed to be. I…

The world we are living in today is radically different from the one that existed when I began writing, over two months ago, some reflections on “hope” and some things that lie beyond the boundaries of hope.   If you read those earlier reflections, you will hear some “echoes” in this attempt to bring the vibrancy…

As promised, here are two more “stories with a moral.” The third story is of uncertain origins, but Jonathan Smith, the celebrated historian of religion at the University of Chicago, identifies it as a Yiddish vaudeville routine.  And it goes like this: It seems that Moses comes before Pharaoh and says, “Let my people go.” …

After I had begun thinking about this idea a few days ago, my friend, Stephanie McLeskey, sent me a link to a blog by Ben Mullinax (see Endnotes for the link) which uses the story from Forrest Gump, at Jenny’s Grave, to make an intriguing case for having both a sense of purpose and the…

While I’ve come to the end of my reflections on the importance and risks of Hope, I’m certainly aware that I exhausted neither all that could be said on the subject nor, in three examples, all of my own experience with hope in its various forms—although it’s certainly possible that I exhausted my readers!  But,…

In a sense, I’m picking up where I left off with my reflections on Ash Wednesday, in what has become something of a “Lenten journey.” And yet, when I started thinking and working on this, well over a month ago, perhaps I should have seen coming what we are now experiencing in the midst of…

In this final post on Hope, I’ll share some of the things I’ve hoped for, how they differed from one another, and how they turned out. Let me begin with this quotation, which is something I could have—and wish I had—written: “Like many, over the course of my life, I’ve spent a fair amount of…

Some days ago I was sitting on our back deck—one of my favorite places in the whole world—soaking up the sunshine on a cold February day, watching gratefully as our two dogs wandered about our spacious, fenced-in back yard in the privacy made possible by the “green screen” provided by the semi-circle of trees that…

Ash Wednesday:  For those who find—or once found—comfort, inspiration, or challenge in the ritual of familiar church liturgy, and those of us who were nurtured in Christian churches that are not in the liturgical tradition, and even those with little or no background in church life, many of us know that on this day—all over…