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Ethics
Sunbeams
January 2006One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our Founding Fathers used in the struggle for independence.
Sunbeams
September 2005In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
The Saint, The Murderer, All Of It
Li-Young Lee’s Poetry Of Reconciliation
I believe the only possible ethical consciousness is one that accounts for the whole human being, that doesn’t leave any of it out — and this is precisely what poetry can achieve. On a social scale, this would be a government that accounts for all of its population — the poor, the rich, women, men, children, old people, black, white. Poetry is a way to integrate all of who we are: the saint, the murderer, all of it. By this, I don’t mean to suggest that we give the murderer free rein, but we have to account for that aspect of human psychology and understand it, not just push it aside.
August 2005
Paradise Found
Christ embodied and lived the sum total of what I’ve learned in life, which is that the truth about things is hidden, it is small, and it is scorned and mocked by the world. Out of this poverty and want, this failure and humiliation, he created a temple “not made by human hands” to fulfill the deepest desire of every human heart, which is not to be so eternally, everlastingly alone.
July 2005
The Religion Of Politics, The Politics Of Religion
If American politics is more religious than it has been for a long time, we are not alone. The world of Islam is undergoing a tremendous religiopolitical revival. I’m not sure I understand what’s behind it. I have the sense that the explanations we read in any paper or see on television are not accurate. September 11 caught us all off guard, and we still have not digested it.
May 2005
Willing To Die?
A body lies in the middle of a dirt road near where we live, tennis shoes poking out from under the cardboard and branches laid over it, flies buzzing around. Political demonstrations spin out of control as pro-government gangs swoop in with clubs and guns.
January 2005
Sunbeams
January 2005Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials, or none at all.
Political Paralysis
Years before I had been stricken by a debilitating illness. Perilymph fistula’s symptoms are like those of multiple sclerosis. On some days I was functional. On others — and I could never predict when these days would strike — I was literally paralyzed. I couldn’t leave the house; I could barely stand up.
November 2004
Sunbeams
November 2004I am not quite sure what the advantage is in having a few more dollars to spend if the air is too dirty to breathe, the water is too polluted to drink, the commuters are losing out in the struggle to get in and out of the city, the streets are filthy, the schools are so bad that the young perhaps wisely stay away, and the hoodlums roll citizens for some of the dollars they saved in the tax cut.
What The Dead Know
It began in the hospitals with what seemed to be an epidemic of miracles. The most recently dead came back first. People whose heartbeats had just flat-lined a second earlier suddenly sat upright on their gurneys and beds and looked into the confused faces of those around them.
October 2004
