MUSLIMS CONDEMN VARNASI TERROR

Dallas…

I have a traumatised hand! The doctor says the swelling is due to grief and trauma. No infection so no anti-biotics. Good grief, what a relief. Just a rather theatrical hand. How dramatic. In the past two weeks I rushed from the north to the south pole in a sardine tin, zig-zagging back, LA, Atlanta, LA – at least first I flew from the UK to NZ in an aeroplane, with special assistance taking me through. It was all a blur. An absurdly dizzying blur. My older brothers and sisters were there to…

Remembering another John ...

Imagine - John Lennon (3:56)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b7qaSxuZUg

by Chris Stedman

from the Huffington Post

“‘Thou shalt not’ might reach the head, but it takes ‘Once upon a time’ to reach the heart.” So said Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass, in a 2007 interview with The Atlantic. He might be right, but I can’t help but…

My tea is getting cold.

As December wears itself threadbare into an unswerving New Hampshire winter, I have to keep a space heater in my office. If I want to get any writing done, I have to remember to give the room an hour to warm up, seeing as how my building’s archaic take on heating is a single, rust bucket of a gas heater at the other end of the apartment. Sometimes I loathe how much my actions are based on the temperature gauge—my activism blanketed in a liminal state of…

A reader of SoF emailed me with a link to a new blog post by Stephen Prothero entitled "My Take: Who owns Jesus? Who owns yoga?" The blog may be of interest to some of you since it touches on issues that we have explored in other SoF posts (including my own: Who ‘owns’ religious practice?).

One sentence in Prothero's blog strikes me as particularly problematic:

"Something is lost, of course,…

StateofFormation.org

Current American discourse on religion and ethics is primarily defined by established leaders—ministers, rabbis, academics and journalists. There is an entire population of important stakeholders without a platform: the up-and-comers.

To remedy this, the Journal of Inter-Religious…

This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post Religion.

"'Thou shalt not' might reach the head, but it takes 'Once upon a time' to reach the heart." So said Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass, in a 2007 interview with The Atlantic.…

Current American discourse on religion and ethics is primarily defined by established leaders—ministers, rabbis, academics and journalists. There is an entire population of important stakeholders without a platform: the up-and-comers.

To remedy this, the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, Hebrew College, Andover Newton Theological School, and the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions have joined forces to create…

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of Human Rights Day by the United Nations in 1950. The annual date chosen for this commemoration was December 10 which honors the adoption and proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 - the first ever global enunciation of human rights.…

I got an acceptance two weeks ago for a short story I wrote and, apart from the stresses of school, my luck was starting to rebound. Since I’ve started planning for Project Conversion, I haven’t had much time for my first love: writing. Then this weekend I found out that two other stories of mine had a chance at acceptance. My heart glowed.

One of those stories was a piece…

This post is somewhat of a follow-up of my last one (Proceeding along the aporetic path), though it may not appear so, at first glance. Both speak to the challenge of knowing what one should do, acknowledging that it is both intentions and results that matter.

We have mice. My wife and I do not like to kill things – I even feel guilty slapping a mosquito on my arm. At first we thought we’d just live with the mice. As time passed,…

I admit it. I sometimes like country music. Bypassing stereotype muses of beer and bad breakups; one can find depth, pathos and metaphor. Back in 2001, one of my favorite songs was (and still is) by teenie fireball Jessica Andrews - Who I Am:

If I live to be a hundred

And never see the seven wonders

That’ll be alright

If I don’t make it to the big leagues

If I never win a Grammy

I’m gonna be just…