Here’s an idea from James Hillman’s Re-Visioning Psychology that blew me away (and it’s not even a complete sentence–amazing that so much is packed into just a few words!): …these figures and feelings are free of my control and identity, not mine at all. [emphasis Hillman's] What is he talking about? If the “figures and [...]

Today’s edition of NPR’s Talk of the Nation radio show featured a panel of experts talking about the problem of clergy abuse–or perhaps I should say the problems of clergy abuse. The experts agreed that sexual predation is ultimately about power, not sexual attraction. But they also commented on a host of other issues that complicate [...]

A televised broadcast of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific this week started me thinking about racism.

Our souls need to reflect on where art, food, and other wonderful things come from.

Reading an article in the July 12/19 2010 New Yorker last night set me thinking about this business of living on a planet that I still, after all these years, can’t figure out. The article I read, David Grann’s “The Mark of a Masterpiece,” is about detecting art forgeries. It’s one of the best pieces [...]

We’re in Jupiter, Florida, taking advantage of one of the last opportunities to fish here before the BP oil slick arrives. The hotel gives us a free copy of USA Today every morning. Because there’s not much to do after we say good-bye to our fishing guide, I’ve been reading the newspaper very carefully. Today’s Life [...]

I just finished reading James Carroll’s remarkable new book Practicing Catholic. Carroll,  a former Paulist priest who has since married, offers a provocative commentary about many issues the Roman Catholic Church has faced in the United States in recent years. It was a sort of time-machine experience for me: As I was reading, I relived  the Kennedy [...]

A book catalog arrived this week, with an announcement about Christopher Bigsby’s new biography of playwright Arthur Miller on the first page. The next day I saw the biography in the New Book display in the college library. I thumbed through it for a couple of minutes before I reluctantly put it back. There’s no time [...]