The Avukana Buddha, a fifth century Sri Lankan work. The island nation’s serene beauty belies years of violence. Photograph by Carlos Delgado.
In the aftermath of the bombings of Roman Catholic churches and upscale hotels in Sri Lanka, a poster on The New York Times website gave me pause. I don’t remember the substance of the post or whether it was by a man or a woman but I remember the last line: I choose safety over diversity.
Read MoreNotre-Dame de Paris as seen on May 24, 2012. Photograph by Peter K. Burian.
In a week in which we’ve “rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are (April 15, tax day, having coincided with the beginning of Holy Week, whose end in turn coincided with Passover) — we also continued our discussion of the language and literature of leadership.
Read MoreCaption: Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf addresses the murder of 11 at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
After a month in which we have seen the grisly murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the terror of 14 pipe bombs sent to the Democratic leadership and CNN and the horror of the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre, we are once again turned in on ourselves to ask – what kind of world are we, what kind of leadership of that world is America providing?
Read MoreWashington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at “Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia: A Deeper Look,” part of the March 21 Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), Washington, D.C. Courtesy POMED>
The grisly murder of Jamal Khashoggi – for which the Saudis have now accepted responsibility (sort of) with some cockamamie blame-the-victim scenario – proves Benjamin Disraeli’s Macchiavellian dictum that there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.
Read MoreIn 1975, James Clavell published “Shōgun,” a blockbuster novel about an English sailor caught up in 17th-century Japan’s feudal, xenophobic power struggles. The novel, which became a hit 1980 miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain, was frank about sex and even franker about violence. But the underlying theme was that of karma and the idea that “karma was always karma.”
We think of karma as fate or destiny. But that is only one aspect of the Eastern principle of cause and effect. What karma says is that what you sow, you shall reap, but not in the eye-for-an-eye way of ancient Judaism. Rather, karma is like physics. I send a pendulum away from me, it comes back with a force equal to that with which I sent it away. …
Read MoreIn Luke 7: 36-50, the writer paints a portrait of limitless love and the limits of the unloving. Jesus dines at the house of Simon the Pharisee, where a woman known to have led a sinful life washed his feet with her tears, dried them with her hair and anointed them with perfume, an expensive commodity. It was a profound display of contrition, humility and love, though the Pharisees saw it as an extravagant outrage, given her reputation.
After offering a parable, Jesus “turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? …
Read MoreIn a 7-2 ruling, the United States Supreme Court has decided that Colorado baker Jack Phillips’ civil rights were violated when the Colorado Civil Rights Commission apparently “ridiculed” his religious beliefs for refusing to bake a gay couple’s wedding cake. It may seem that Phillips’ religious objections to gay marriage trumped David Mullins and Charlie Craig’s civil rights as a gay couple. But had the commission not gotten “hostile,” it might’ve gone the other way.
Here, however, is what the “offending” commissioner actually said …
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