Browse Topics
Religion and Philosophy
Sunbeams
January 2014Will is the means by which we overcome the problems that life or genes have handed us. Without it, there is no true character.
Beginner’s Mind
Sy Safransky On God, LSD, And The Magazine He Founded
The Sun has always been bigger than me. Wiser than me. Steadier than me. One of the satisfactions of publishing it for all these years is that I’ve gotten to see what happens when like-minded people work together toward a common goal.
January 2014
excerpted from
Still Here
Recently, a friend said to me, “You’re more human since the stroke than you were before.” This touched me profoundly. What a gift the stroke has given me, to finally learn that I don’t have to renounce my humanity in order to be spiritual — that I can be both witness and participant, both eternal spirit and aging body.
January 2014Praying Alone In Qatar
It’s still dark when the muezzin calls for Fajr, the first prayer of the day. I’ve already been awake for a couple of hours: lying in bed, not thinking, not trying not to think, just taking in the predawn sounds of this utterly foreign city, Doha, the capital of Qatar. Our house faces Al Shamal Road, a long highway that snakes across the country from the northern coastline to the southern border with Saudi Arabia.
December 2013Sisterhood
Sister Louise Akers Challenges The Church Patriarchy
The writings of the Church fathers take a misogynistic view of women. Saint Jerome, for example, said that women are a “pathway to hell,” and Saint Augustine viewed women as intellectually inferior and as a moral threat to men. This view of women was consistent through the Middle Ages, when Thomas Aquinas wrote in Summa Theologica that women are “misbegotten males.”
November 2013
excerpted from
The Color Purple
But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you can’t miss it.
November 2013Sunbeams
October 2013They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.
Selected Poems
— from “With That Moon Language” | Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to / them, “Love me.” / Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise / someone would call the cops.
October 2013This I Believed
I believed, even as a child, that I was being raised up in the right way to live. My family attended the local Seventh-Day Adventist church every Saturday. I sang songs about David and Goliath, and I belted out that I was “too young to march in the infantry” or to “ride in the cavalry” or to “shoot the artillery,” but not too young to serve “in the Lord’s army.”
October 2013
excerpted from
Ten Conversations At Once
The Dalai Lama climbed the ladder and entered the dome of this same Great Hum. Already five others had seated themselves. One of these was a highly developed lama who could sing three notes at once, each note carrying a different conversation. Another could carry on two conversations, and the other three could carry on only one. This meant that eight conversations were already taking place. Since the Dalai Lama could carry on two, his arrival completed the number of visitors allowed, and he closed the door after him.
October 2013
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