I think the best thing that has ever been said on the subject of prayer was said by the medieval mystic known as Meister Eckhart: “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”
This, of course, is precisely the most difficult prayer to utter when you are not feeling at all reverent …and yet it would seem the one most necessary at precisely such a time. [Read more →]
As mentioned in last quarter’s column, there have been a lot of “life-as-illusion” themed movies coming out lately. While I suspect that the success of Avatar and Lost are partly responsible for this trend, I think people’s fascination with 2012, drastic world changes, and a surge in our search for meaning are also fueling the recent string of films about alternate realities and simulated worlds. When airplanes are crashing into buildings, cities are submerged underwater, the Middle East is revolting, and the world economy is collapsing, real life almost seems more fantastical than our dreams. Jon Stewart summed it up perfectly at the 2008 Academy Awards: “Normally, when you see a black man or a woman president, an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty.” Yes, we are now officially living in the future, and we all know what kind of stuff happens in the future—exactly the kind of stuff that’s happening right now. But at least, thanks to Hollywood, we’ve been warned. And Hollywood’s heads up may even go much deeper than prophesies of events to come. They may help explain the reality we all find ourselves in. [Read more →]
Dear Harold,
Boy! I am certainly feeling a little silly this morning. It seems my faith in Woody Harrelson, the Mayan calendar and the world’s demise in 2012 has been exceedingly misplaced. According to you, the end of the world actually begins this weekend. Saturday—right after the six o’clock news!
The Zionist Entity is the Little Satan. The Great Satan? USA! USA! USA! No big surprises there. It’s pretty easy to laugh at this literal demonization. Okay, so we’re the debbil! That’s pretty cool, actually. We’re all red and smoky! What are you going to do about it? Send the Egyptian Navy? Kill us one by one when you get the chance? Practicality demands the latter and so does the koran. If, at this late date, you do not know that jihad is a required sacrament of all muslims and that it demands your conversion, submission or death, truly you don’t know much. I will dispense with pro-forma exclusions of “good muslims” who might box or rap, or “moderate muslims” who are simply not that devout and those even rarer creatures, the “reformist muslims” who do forthrightly declare adherence to something we modern Westerners would recognize as openness and tolerance. Because they are satans, too.
You have to admire the pure binary nature of the catechismic divide. This is the central enterprise of islam, functioning like a junior-high school clique the muslim scholars toil merely to decide who is in. And who is out. [Read more →]
10. Instead of 72 virgins, he was greeted by 12 goats
9. Hell’s only movie theater is showing The Love Guru on a continuous loop
8. The constant whine of smoke alarms really gets on your nerves
7. The road there was actually paved with bad intentions
6. Evidently, none of the suicide bombers made it to Heaven
5. Hitler knows some great ethnic jokes
4. While it’s unbearably hot, there’s no humidity!
3. Hell TV airs nothing but reality shows 24–7
2. They’re expecting a cold snap if Sarah Palin gets elected President
1. It turns out “the Great Satan” isn’t the United States after all
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
As we come to the end of Holy Week, a week where Christ-related news stories involved church bombings, sex abuse by clerics and protecting hate speech by Christian fundamentalists – with breaks devoted to ads for Easter candy and holiday sales events – it’s good to remember the biggest news story of all …
He is risen …
Christ is risen, indeed …
It is highly possible that there are numerous reasons why my friends and acquaintances are glad that they are not me. So it goes. But I remember one time, in high school, when a good buddy of mine came right out and said it: “Dude, I’m so glad I am not you.”
It seems he had heard me discussing a piece of music with another musician friend. We had been tearing a song into pieces, trying to figure out what was going on with the time-signatures.
“I think I am insulted,” I responded to my candid pal. “Why, besides the obvious stuff, do you not want to be me?” [Read more →]
Last week I came upon this quote from the English novelist John Fowles: “There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not anymore what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.” [Read more →]
It is always nice to get up to date, even it takes some time. In my case, the process seems to be proceeding apace. I’m not up to date yet, but I have at least caught up with the 13th century.
Let me explain how I discovered this. In my last column I made the point that what is called creation is not something that took place several billion years ago, but something that is taking place now. [Read more →]
My last column concluded with the notion of discovering islands of meaning in the sea of information we find ourselves adrift in these days. I have since been pondering this, and have come to realize that I didn’t really think the matter through.
There is, to begin with, a problem with the metaphor. We discover real islands in real seas because they are unmistakably there on the horizon. But islands of meaning in the sea of information are not as immediately and irrefutably evident as an island in the Pacific. The fact is, different people can derive different meanings from exactly the same information. [Read more →]
There have been a lot of “life-as-illusion” themed movies coming out lately. We’ve had Avatar, Inception, and TRON: Legacy, and this month alone there’s The Adjustment Bureau, Limitless, Sucker Punch and Source Code. All these films share themes of alternate realities, questions about what is reality, and insight into powers that might be manipulating the reality we live in. While I hope to discuss the most recent batch of these films in an upcoming column, for now I’d like to bring up one that slipped past the radar of many moviegoers. This film actually gave me goose bumps when it revealed an angle that I’ve only recently adopted, and have never before seen in any other movie. That film is Disney’s Tangled. [Read more →]
Bear with me for two reasons: First, I can’t believe that someone, somewhere in the history of philosophical thinking, hasn’t said what I am about to say — but as a guy who cranks out a column a week here and three other pieces per week on his own blog, I’m simply not going to research it and find out. (Please feel free to let me know if I am parroting Descartes or Dr. Phil or something.) Second, I’m going to start with people, in general, and then apply it to the artistic types, so, please be patient, dear reader. [Read more →]
Many years ago I was having a conversation with a friend who happened to be a psychiatrist. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but I do remember that something I said prompted him to say, “That’s magical thinking.” I don’t think I had ever heard the phrase “magical thinking” before, and I wasn’t sure what it meant. But I thought for a moment, and replied, “Probably. So what? That can probably be just as good as any other kind.”
I’m still not exactly sure what magical thinking is. [Read more →]
This past weekend, for the third year in a row, I joined my father at a religious retreat in the affluent suburbs of Philadelphia. And luckily, for the third straight year, I didn’t burst into flames the second I stepped on the retreat grounds. I spent some nice, holy, quality time with my very kind and caring father. It was a time of prayer, a time of reflection, and a time to catch up on all the sleep my toddler son is taking away from me. [Read more →]
In anticipation of TRON: Legacy, I recently re-watched a bunch of simulation-world films including The Thirteenth Floor, eXistenZ, and the original TRON, which I hadn’t seen in over twenty-five years. While I remember being somewhat confused watching the futuristic Disney film as a kid, seeing it again with new eyes, I was amazed at how clearly it expressed the “life as illusion” theme I’ve been so fascinated by as an adult. In the original movie, Jeff Bridges is considered a “user.” While Bridges often plays users in his films, in this case, it refers to a computer user who manipulates the scenarios of a digital world that is very similar to our own. In the original film, users are considered mythical, messianic figures who can help free the programs from the game they find themselves in. This got me thinking. [Read more →]
Imagine a small country with a native population known as Culture A with new residents from another country known as Culture B. Culture A has been in existence for a couple of centuries and enjoys a prosperous lifestyle with all the modern conveniences from cars to dishwashers to lavish vacations. Culture B comes from a place with less material comforts. Educational opportunities abound for Culture A children in their native land while Culture B children were mostly stuck in a restrictive class structure that offered few chances for self-betterment. [Read more →]
I had been looking forward to seeing David Russell in concert for a long time. In my opinion, he is the finest living classical guitarist. He was to perform at the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia. It’s a pretty big room. It seats about five-hundred and there were people standing in the back, too. People suck up sound, you know. I leaned over to a fellow guitarist and said, “Do you see any microphones?” He furrowed his brow and shook his head. We were worried. We were halfway back in the crowd. This was terrible. Then, David Russell trotted out pleasantly to lively applause and took his seat. He checked his tuning, but the turning of the buttons had the secondary effect of serving as a volume dial for his audience: the crowd slowly went as silent as a snowy pine-forest. [Read more →]
In a blog post titled The God Instinct. Some notes , Mark Vernon quotes William James: “Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see ‘the liver’ determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul.” Vernon then adds a gloss to this: “Only atheists don’t usually consider dismissing their own convictions on evolutionary grounds. Funny that.” [Read more →]
The poet Rilke had a brief encounter with psychoanalysis, but proved wary of it. “I am afraid,” he said, “that if my demons leave me, my angels will take flight as well.”
His remark popped into my mind recently under somewhat odd circumstances: at Sunday Mass during the reading of the Gospel. [Read more →]
