Clik here to view.
102. Consistency
Toward the end of the February 22 Republican primary debate, John King asked the candidates to define themselves in a single word. “Consistent,” replied Representative Ron Paul. In the ensuing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
138. Being right
Thomas Brackett ReedJanuary 2, 1894 “I would rather be right than president,” declared William McKendree Springer, Democrat from Illinois, on the floor of the House. “The gentleman needn’t worry,”...
View ArticleClik here to view.
141. A laughing matter
HoteiKano Takanobu, 1616 Last month my infant granddaughter Allegra uttered her first belly laugh. At the time she was sitting upright in her father’s lap, firmly supported by his two strong hands....
View ArticleClik here to view.
150. Let’s not go there
In his poignant essay “The Old Order,” the Irish-American writer James Silas Rogers recalls his conversation on an Amtrak train with a young Amish man named Johann, who was crossing Wisconsin with his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
152. Put it in neutral
“Put it in neutral, Bud,” my father said, quietly but firmly. It was the summer of 1958, and I was learning to drive. The car was a 1950 Chevrolet sedan with a three-speed transmission and the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
162. True intimacy
In its most common usage, the word intimacy hardly suggests a spiritual context. Enter the word in your browser, and you are likely to turn up references to the bedroom, the boudoir, and Britney...
View ArticleClik here to view.
163. The music of constancy
“As everyone knows,” declares Ishmael, the narrator of Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick (1851), “meditation and water are wedded forever.” Melville’s schoolmaster-turned-sailor makes this remark in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Beyond comparison
“Have you been comparing?” ask Rodgers and Hart in their 1932 ballad “You Are Too Beautiful.” I suspect that most of us, if we are being honest and sufficiently self-aware, would have to answer in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
191. The habit of complaint
I once had a neighbor who rarely stopped complaining, chiefly about his ailments. On one day it was his allergies, on another his asthma. On rare occasions, when his body was being relatively...
View ArticleClik here to view.
199. Making the unwanted wanted
Shizen ichimi, an old Zen saying asserts: “Poetry and Zen are one.” And in the poems of Jane Hirshfield (b. 1953), a leading American poet and longtime Zen practitioner, that adage is borne out in...
View Article
