When The Teacher Comes

FACING OURSELVES HONESTLY is a bitter pill to swallow; we hope it is also good medicine. At the end of our rope, a guide or mentor can be just what is needed to move from self-pity to wholeness. If we can learn to trust. Dante fears that the bitter but gracious truths he had learned about himself will die with him, leaving no opportunity to be translated into life. He is ready for a teacher, but the Teacher has not come. Paul Patterson continues to channel Dante's imagination through the part of The Divine Comedy. In the twilight

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Monsters at the Margin

VIRTUE IS FOUND at the margins of society more often than at its centre. If this is so, Mary Shelley's Monster is a real find! Her creature is an isolate of great sensitivity, kindness, and insight. Contrary to James Whale's 1931 film of the Creature as a lumbering dolt, Mary Shelley's Monster was modeled on Rousseau's notion of humanity as the "noble savage." The nobility of the Creature is evident as he unveils his chronicle to Victor Frankenstein upon the icy crags of Mount Blanc. Meet Frankenstein's Creature

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Passions of Prometheus

I DON'T THINK that it is inconsequential that my heroes are men.... It is not because women are not as passionate, creative, or in any way undeserving that they don't make my short list of heroes. Rather, it is because I share with most men an inclination toward "Prometheanism". I don't know why it is not as prevalent in most women. Perhaps it is the hard wiring of centuries of birthing and caring for life (if I am allowed that stereotypical explanation). I do not think it is because women are morally superior to men, only that

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A Stranger To Justice

Everybody loves to see justice done on somebody else. Justice has become an off-putting term for me. I associate it with political correctness and link it to individual rights. Justice seems to me merely ideological, an excuse for group or self interest. I know this attitude of mine must be prejudiced since every moral perspective, including Aristotle and the Bible, place justice close to the starting point of its ethics. It's time that I take a more objective look at the virtue starting with the reasons for my bias against it.

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Traintalk: Am I a Tourist or a Pilgrim?

THE LAST FIVE years have been comfortable. THE LAST FIVE Admitting this comes hard for someone with my intensity. An amiable life conjures images of being lazy, being part of a bovine collective, lulled asleep by consumerism and the mind-numbing drone of what my grandfather called “the idiot box” — the family TV set. I laugh as I write this staring at recent additions to that idiot box: a DVD player, a VCR, and Digital Surround Sound. That little distraction that once graced the center of the living room has taken over. My so-called room of living has evolved

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A Reading Guide For After The Flood

Lovers of books often complain that we read too slowly and wonder if we will ever take the time and effort to master the The Art of Speed Reading. My difficulty is that sometimes, strike that - often, that I need to acquire the Art of Reading Slowly to integrate what I read. I don't do that nearly enough. My habitual approach is to read a book with my mind and my hand outstretched to the read. I read distractedly often merely to get the basic gist, get through to book, and then add another book to my growing list

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An Interview with Richard Geldard

My approach to Emerson has always been to take him seriously, to ask myself, "What if he is actually serious? What if he actually means what he says?" Too often, Emerson is read as metaphor and not as reality. In this case, he is asking why it is that we who are alive today must depend upon the past for our revelations [read spiritual truth]? The "past" in this case is embodied in institutionalized religion. Why do we have to assume that God spoke to human beings once (the burning bush, etc.) but then became silent? Why don't we

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Brides of Frankenstein

WHILE I SAT at the breakfast table, I felt the blood drain out of my face and into my stomach as I listened to her ramble. It wasn't the scattered content that made me so uncomfortable. The content itself was a disconnected diatribe of sy gossip and trivia, punctuated by misplaced maxims that in their popular form might have actually meant something. Despite the dogmatism, moral superiority, and intensity that was expressed through her tone and bodily gestures, I felt humiliated, embarrassed. Although outwardly there was nothing to be afraid of - I experienced dread. I looked sideways at my

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Dante's Recovery

HAVE YOU EVER been so swallowed up in something unfair happening to you that you couldn't find your way out of it? The Italian poet Dante Alighieri found himself the victim of vicious politics in 13th century Florence. Eventually he would write an epic poem about it—The Divine Comedy. Here is an imagined journey on what might have been on Dante's mind as he wrote his poem. One after another they rose to expose me. Libel and barbs of betrayal dripped from their venomous lips. The president's gavel scarred his lectern as he called out, "Order!"

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H. Richard Niebuhr: An Introduction

Richard Niebuhr was brought up in a German American family with deep roots in the intellectual world of Europe. He breathed in the American atmosphere of change, activity, progress and capitalism, all of which called for an activist response to social injustice.

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