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To Remain

Raja Shehadeh on Living through Destruction in Palestine

I have been thinking that people all over the world these days are feeling a sense of despair because, like me, they are seeing the destruction of the world as they knew it. But it has occurred to me that the real destruction of my world happened in 1948, when the Palestinians lost Palestine.

Sunbeams

We seem always ready to pay the price for war. Almost gladly we give our time and our treasure—our limbs and even our lives—for war. But we expect to get peace for nothing.

Peace Pilgrim

No Politics

Rabbi Shmuley went over the ground rules: “We are here to learn from each other, not to argue. Certainly not to compete. Don’t deny anyone’s experience. Don’t deny anyone’s subjectivity. And, of course, no politics.”

The Feeding

Some leeches have two jaws. Others have three. Some have teeth on their tongues. There are protective leeches who hover over their eggs, and leeches who carry their newborns in pouches like tiny kangaroos.

The Good End of Pleasant Street

When our landlords came by to introduce themselves, they stood beside a shelf of our books on how to avoid suffering: “Develop a mind that clings to nothing,” said the Buddhist Diamond Sutra; Be Here Now, read the spine of a Ram Dass book. Dan was a general contractor and wore a flat cap and a half grin. Or a sneer. I wasn’t sure which.

Ancestors

Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah on the Musical and Cultural Legacy of New Orleans

Some African harmonic traditions and histories may have been redacted, but they’re not lost. In New Orleans, specifically among the tribes, they made sure to hold on to those histories and the skeleton keys of those expressions.

Struck

I often wonder if there was something I missed, if the thunder and lightning said something I couldn’t understand.

Home Invasions

Still, I hadn’t counted on real, live rats. “I’m surprised you hadn’t heard them before,” said Rat Guy #1, as he came to be known. “From the looks of it they’ve been here a while.”

Practice Losing Everything

I challenged my students to interrogate their own religious inheritance, and I spoke frequently of the “ethics of faith.” I asked whether they’d arrived at faith through honest inquiry or by suppressing their doubts.