Lately the Bible has been getting a bum rap. Christopher Hitchens calls it “a nightmare”and blames it for much of humanity’s suffering—everything from sexism to genocide. At the same time, literalist approaches to the Bible have produced narrow theology and tendentious, unscientific speculation.
This introduction to the philosophy of religion, originally published in 1998, is fully revised and updated in the 2008 edition. The authors, Beverly Clack and Brian R. Clack are, respectively, reader in theology, philosophy and…
For some reason I can’t explain, I know Saint Peter won’t call my name. Coldplay[1] Some of the functions in the celestial body will not appear in the terrestrial body, neither in the telestial body, and…
This is Dagan on the day after a 4 a.m. porn binge. Another. The third in as many weeks. He drifts into the living room in late afternoon, sees Tam at his computer, freezes. He…
Every now and then I make it a point to go
without knowing to these places, try to discover
a view of my own, be surprised, have
an experience uncluttered by history or the facts.
I try to imagine my way to a bit of truth or the
answer to some awkward childhood riddle.
Again the curlew calls its name.
Where we’ve camped over years,
the sky has already distanced itself
from the heat press of summer,
the lakeshore fluent
with ridges only seasons of water can scroll.
It’s as if the fields of five decades
have been broomed clean—dry as straw.
But in the border woods, ground holds scent:
leaf-humus and pine,
an after-hint of smoke, or ash.
The escalator broken again
We climb the adjacent stairs
In wingtips and houndstooth slacks.
I peer into the guts of the silent machine.
This is where my mind wanders,
Behind this desk, bathed in soft
Monitor light. This is where
I levitate, oscillate, and glide
Apples! Bags and boxes of apples! So many of them lined the perimeter of our garage that the car hardly fit. It was mid-October, and I stood there counting the apples picked from our three backyard trees and asked myself how long it would take to deal with all of them. This year I was determined not to let any go to waste.