Life In Buddha Standard Time
Recent scandals show us that men today are broken. We have created a hyper-competitive society where the worth of a man is judged by one thing and one thing only: his professional success, measured in how much money he has, how much power he wields, and how famous he's become.
Given that the vast majority of American Buddhists are converts and spend years circling around meditational deities such as Tārā, how do we listen to songs written with her mantra as the lyrics?
If God did not mean for us to live forever and did not indicate that longevity beats out quality, doesn't it make sense that when someone is dying the expectation would be to encourage them to let go?
Governments at every level are cutting or even eliminating funding to a multitude of programs serving the homeless and those living in poverty. So the need is real. But the people are real, too.
Evolutionary biology teaches us just how closely related all people are and how insignificant racial and religious differences are.
"How can we as men say our call from God is authentic, but your call as women is not? Who are we to reject God's call of women to the priesthood?"
Jesus could have suggested we make peace with our enemies or negotiate peace agreements or peacefully resolve conflict. Instead, he entreated them to go further: to "love" them.
I hate what Tressel did. I hate that he lied. But even more, I hate that I put him in a position to break my heart so much. He should never have been there in the first place.
Reed, I suspect, has his eyes on the Holy Grail of conservative politics: figuring out a way to unite evangelical conservatives with Tea Party conservatives.
As the interim pastor of Peace Lutheran, I stay in Joplin only three days a week, commuting from my home in Kansas City, Mo. So I rode out the tornado in the motel basement. The motel was south of the storm's path.
While I understand wanting to adhere to one's faith, this is an issue in which the welfare of the child must come first. Studies have shown that children do not suffer from a same-sex household.
My views about God, my feelings about myself and others, and my views regarding the universe shifted, or better, morphed into something infinitely more meaningful than I could have ever imagined.
Congress is fed up with the war in Afghanistan, and its members' turn against the war mirrors the quickly changing public opinion.
What would the world look like if everyone adopted the Shaolin Kung Fu lifestyle? The world would be more beautiful. The world would be more peaceful, more perfect.
Not only is Bachmann a fan of creationism and its anti-intellectual offshoot, intelligent design, she's made some outlandish claims about the pseudoscientific subject.
Romero's faith moved him from being a tool of the wealthy to a champion of the poor, a church leader dedicated to reconciliation and a bishop unafraid to interpose himself between violence and his flock.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if in the future the only thing Sixth and I had to worry about with their food truck was whether they had enough challah on hand to serve the hundreds in line?
We honored our interfaith son's transition to adolescence with the essence of the Bar Mitzvah (reading from the Torah and Shabbat prayers), but also included elements drawn from his Christian heritage.
The Islamic Penal Code and other institutions across the country designed around religious doctrine have proven incapable of supporting a standard of human rights acceptable in today's world.
Rabbi Shais Taub, 2011.06.05
Lama Surya Das, 2011.06.04
Brady Boyd, 2011.06.03
