Category: Social Issues
Lessons Learned while Teaching Buddhist Monks
Teaching Cambodian Buddhist monks is mostly the same as teaching Cambodian children. There are less discipline problems and the monks can’t play games—even educational ones. Also, because I am... Read More
Secularism and Pluralism: Two Movements for Equality
As a humanist working in multifaith education, I sometimes feel tension between secularism and pluralism. Much of the new atheist movement is aimed at instituting and enforcing secularism in our commu... Read More
Rosh HaShanah – The Day of Infinite Possibilities
Each year we have the opportunity read the text of our lives differently according to the vowels we supply. Rosh Hashanah invites us to gently and lovingly bring ourselves back to God, the eternal mot... Read More
On Affront: A Quaker’s Response Towards Being Wronged
My bike was stolen this last week. It happened in broad daylight, whilst I was teaching my first class of the term. At 12:30pm, I parked my bike at the library on campus, locked it up with my Knog-loc... Read More
The Yoga of Ecology: The Teaching Garden
In a previous blog exactly a year ago on the Huffington Post, I shared the philosophy of “simple living and high thinking” as presented by the eminent Vedic teacher/scholar A.C Bhaktiveda... Read More
When Islamists Change Their Mind
Cartoons today, Egypt tomorrow? Recently a Catholic friend of mine revealed that he is considering going Episcopalian because, as a married man in his 30s, he is sensing a spiritual and vocational cal... Read More
Jon Kabat-Zinn and Kierkegaard walk into an ICU
Jon: Let’s breath in, acknowledge our emotions, and observe. Soren: Yes, let’s do that. But what is the question you are willing to live for? I am a medical resident working in an ICU in Boston. M... Read More
An Archipelago Is Better Than an Island: Community, Revitalization, and a Summer Well Spent
I love almost everything about being a Baptist – the emphasis on scripture, local church autonomy, and the radical, “low-church” ecclesiology have always appealed to me, and being raised in the ... Read More