Wonderful Matters

I was in Barnes and Noble tonight, doing the browsing thing which I love to do. I have a teacher's discount, so occasionally I'll pick up a book I'd like, as I did tonight. Couple of books caught my eye, and I may or may not read them. One was The Entitlement Cure  by John Townsend, who was quite the formidable influence on my young adult life, teaching me about bonding and boundaries. He's an extraordinarily wise man, and this latest looks like more of the same regarding something I've thought for quite some time. I did leaf through it a bit, though not much because I don't think it is quite right to read whole sections of a book that isn't purchased. The part I did see though confirmed what I thought. That when you think people owe you something, life is pretty miserable. Among those few words I caught were "entitlement pockets", meaning there are at least some  things we think we're owed no matter how gracious and deferential we are. I...

Recently Time magazine did a modern take on its famous cover from 1966, "Is God Dead?" At that time many were abandoning formal religion for the hinterlands of alternative spiritualities, what with the ability to travel to and communicate with other cultures becoming faster and easier. "Hey! Wow! Look at this cool spiritual thing here in India! Hmm, Hinduism  and all the karma and reincarnation and all that cool stuff! Or over here! Buddhism  where you can just let it all go because it's all nothing anyway! Cool!" A lot of these ideas wove their way into more liberal theological pronouncements consuming some of the more eminent seminaries, and quite a few people then headed off to Woodstock-like events rather than those stodgy old concrete churches. Today our "post-truth" society now wonders, "Is Truth Dead?" Funny, for that statement to be meaningful, truth must be alive . While it is easy to understand the sentiment, this is why ask...