Mar 25 2014
Leonard Swidler has been a teacher for over 50 years. He is a religion scholar, one of the founders of the very field of interreligious dialogue — but whatever he’s done, from the day he stepped into graduate school and until this day, he has taught in a classroom. Sometimes, out of it. Usually, both. …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-why-we-teach/
Feb 26 2014
We are a complex culture, no doubt. Like most developed societies, we are rather varied, and you may encounter within an earshot hurt and consolation, justice and prejudice, willful ignorance and playful brilliance, manifestos of communal and individualistic lifestyles in their most radical forms. I can go on listing extremes, but no need. I am …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-how-to-make-a-lonely-culture/
Dec 22 2013
This was another one of those thoughts that are too obvious, too simple to be formulated without prompting. It was born of a conversation with my best friend about how, even though we are so different, we love each other nonetheless. And as we talked, my friend seemed to suggest that some people are able …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-otherness-and-sameness/
Dec 10 2013
Every Advent, early in the season, my parish has a “wishing tree” standing in the back of the church. It’s a Christmas tree with little tags hanging on it, like ornaments, and each has the first name of a child, gender and age, and a wish that child wrote down for a Christmas present. These …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-indiscriminate-care/
Nov 24 2013
It so happened that I live much of my time at intersections of theistic faiths—but especially in that mine field that is the space between people of religion and people without one. My regular readers know that I grew up atheist, in an atheist state, in a secular Jewish family, that I spent my professional …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-taking-them-seriously/
Nov 02 2013
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-animal-liberation-part-2/
Oct 26 2013
“What you do to the least of these, you do to me,” says the Son of Man, the ultimate Judge and Abiding Presence of the Christian scripture. “By me is this entire universe pervaded. All things are in Me, and I in them,” declares Lord Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu himself in the Bhagavat Gita …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-the-measure-of-souls-part-1/
Oct 14 2013
The first generation of Christians expected the Son of Man to come back in their lifetimes, literally any day. They were an apocalyptic Jewish sect, whose Messiah had come and saved and risen in triumph over death—and promised to come back soon to finish the job. And for Jewish apocalyptics, finishing the job meant ending …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-watchful-waiting/
Jul 30 2013
My neighbor just put his dog to sleep. I’ve met the dog – a vivacious, playful lab, unquestionably happy and full of spirit. I went on a walk once with this neighbor and his two dogs. What the man did, he did obviously out of care and compassion, and now he mourns. This is common. …
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-falling-asleep-and-putting-to-sleep/
Permanent link to this article: http://onmounthoreb.com/on-the-name-of-god-part-2/
Jul 24 2013
On the Name of God. Part II.
July 24, 2013
Continued from On the Name of God. Part I. This is where we left off: The Hebrew Bible, the patchwork of myth and the ages and folktale and hindsight and inspiration and gut feeling and politics that it is, refuses to name God. I like that. But that is where I encounter a problem. Two problems, …
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