holidays
Happy Circumcision Day
As we kick off the New Year, let’s not forget that fallen Catholic festival, the Feast of the Circumcision. The Catholic Encyclopedia outlines the reasons for commemorating this festival on January 1st. “As Christ wished to fulfill the law and to show His descent according to the flesh from Abraham. He, though not bound by…
What Would Plato Do for Labor Day?
“Of the painter we say that he will paint reins, and he will paint a bit?” Socrates asks Glaucon in the epilogue to Plato’s Republic. “But does the painter know the right form of the bit and reins? Nay, hardly even the workers in brass and leather who make them; only the horseman who knows…
Fire-walking at Mount Takao
Mount Takao is located in a western, wooded stretch of greater Tokyo. It is a prime destination to take in the seasons and escape the asphalt island that is the rest of the city. Plum and cherry blossoms in the spring and crimson maples in the autumn attract the most visitors. An old temple, Yakuōin,…
A Country to Die For
Memorial Day has never been my favorite. In Arlington, Virginia, where I grew up, it always meant the roar of Vietnam Vets on motorcycles all day. And the occasion can bring out our most jingoistic spirit. As I passed three separate suspension bridges across the Hudson River today, each with a giant American flag hanging…
Mothers We Have Known
Killing the Buddha celebrates Mother’s Day this year with Elizabeth Wildman’s “Big Fat Jewish Pregnancy” and Kathryn Joyce’s acceptance speech for her 2009 Vulgaria Child Catcher of the Year Prize, awarded by the ultra-right Vision Forum organization in disgruntled recognition of Kathryn’s book about “Quiverfull” moms who bear as many children as they can, a…
happy earth day, world.
“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.” ~ John Muir
Truly It is a Good Friday
Chemo and pulling ivy are far preferable to incense, stations and kissing the cold feet of Jesus.
Happy Easter from Cornel West
Every religious tradition has been tied into various forms of domination and subjugation. Every religious tradition has been manipulated and bastardized by elites to try to control believers. At the same time, there are always prophetic elements, dimensions, and slices of religious tradition that stand in opposition to the powers that be. Christianity itself came…
Bedlam Backwards: My Haggadah
A family Seder where “Next year in Jerusalem” really means next year in Jersey.
Happy JewBu Day
Today’s a big day. At sunset, Passover begins (stay tuned for a special piece publishing at that very moment!). And in Japan, it’s the Buddha’s birthday. What a wonderful coincidence (or dilemma?) for all the JewBus out there! I also know at least two people with birthdays today, and they’re both at least part Jewish…
Naked and Guilty
Young Christians encounter sex, violence, and the eros of evangelicalism in a Texas hell house.
Ain’t No Party Like a …
Biking through Brooklyn. 10:30 pm on a Monday. You pass big hats—big ones. Music pumping from even more enormous vehicles. Hummers? No. Escalades? No again. Rented white RVs scattered through the streets, packed full of Hasidic boys dressed in sparkles? Oh, yes. Did I mention the children dressed up in costumes? And that the music…
25 Random Notes on Ash Wednesday
25 Random Notes on Ash Wednesday I woke up early to my roommate putting away the silverware in the kitchen, then fell back asleep. When I woke up the wooden rosary that I fell asleep with wrapped around my hand was lost in the sheets. Last night I was asked if I keep any symbolic…
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