Nov 27 2016
After 18 months of the most divisive presidential campaign in recent history, it’s been 18 days since the most bizarre election—possibly, in all of American history—upended our reality and shattered our country’s social landscape. No matter whose supporters, it’s all anybody still talks about. Some are triumphant, others terrified, but everyone is stunned, and everyone’s …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-four-years/
Aug 28 2016
A couple of weeks ago I read an article that, should I have taken it literally and all the way, would have pushed me into a depression. The article was political in nature but addressed a larger concern of our mental and cultural state—certainly in this country, maybe in the world. The author attempted to …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-feeling-the-truth/
Jun 22 2016
How to be good to people has been on my mind for a long time, but especially lately. I’ve engaged in a political debate about treating illegal immigrants and atheists with respect. I had to write for a scholarly journal a review of a book I found lacking in merit, and I was torn between …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-the-wool-rule/
May 28 2016
I had to get a new car. I loved my old car. She was a Toyota Echo, and I’d had her since she was born in 2000. She was perfect, as though made for me—cheap and basic, reliable, little and economical, built for a short person, with a soft comfy seat and lots of storage …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-good-and-good-enough/
Sep 23 2015
I return to this subject years after I wrote about it, briefly, as a “thought of the day” on June 11, 2012. (You can find the passage now on the “Older Thoughts of the Day” page.) I return to it because I had thought of it on and off for years, and never stopped after …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-humility-again/
May 27 2015
I have begun work on a very interesting, long-term translation project with a historian of literature, who is writing a book about Dostoevsky. For this project, I am translating hundreds of pages of obscure notes and reminiscences about Dostoevsky, some of his own writing, and comparing existing translations. Not only have I re-immersed myself in …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-why-i-brush/
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-peace-with-us/
Feb 23 2015
What does a three-thousand-year-old murder have to do with a 20th-century revolution? What does a queen of ancient Israel have to do with Stalinism, slavery, or internment camps? The interplay of two eternal questions humanity has asked, nurtured, abused, distorted, ignored, and bounced off each other since the dawn of its consciousness: When something goes …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-who-is-to-blame/
Dec 12 2014
Torture has been in the news again. On Tuesday, the Senate committee released its report on the CIA’s use of torture, and mass media has been abuzz with its findings ever since. After September 11, this is a recurring topic for us, and it is not just news, or some discussion or even a debate. …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-torture/
Nov 25 2014
Last week, I was part of an Interfaith Thanksgiving Service. I am a choir director at a Catholic parish, which is a member of a local interfaith association, and this service is something we do every year around Thanksgiving. It was a beautiful thing: churches of many denominations came together—Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Nazarene, and more—and …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-desecrating-church/
Apr 17 2015
On peace with us.
April 17, 2015
We are uncertain. Much of the time we are afraid. We endure pain and grieve, mourning for lives unlived. We huddle in rooms that feel safe with our loved ones, and there we thread through our fingers the most precious of our memories and the most fragile of questions. Sometimes we are desperate, sometimes hopeful. …
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