Who does not love an evening walk in the late spring and early summer? The birds in the trees, a cool breeze against one’s face. If you are fortunate to be with a loved one, you may be talking over your day or even your dreams, perhaps enjoying the silence together. Or maybe you are a solitary walker lost in the reveries of the night. Many of us in this time of pandemic have rediscovered the invigorating joys of an…
I said, “I do not know how to speak. I am too young!” But the Lord answered me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ To whomever I send you, you shall go; whatever I command you, you shall speak.” Jeremiah 1.6-7 In my last post, I wrote about the need for white folks to listen, to hold in some sense a long moment of silence, so that we could hear the voices we have dismissed. I still want to…
“Remember that we have two eyes and two ears, but only one mouth for a reason.” Traditional folk proverb The horrific deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor and the events following are too raw and too real for any commentary grounded in reflection by a white man. These deaths call for the action we are seeing in the streets. Action that has been missing for far too long in this country. White people play a crucial role…
There are many who say that we reveal our true character in times of adversity. If you listen even half-heartedly, you will here this refrain from corporate TV commercials, some political candidates, and most likely your place of employment. And well, it’s true. Common sense dictates that to defeat Covid-19 we need to come together; we do need to work for the greater good. And if we haven’t been challenged by adversity yet, we are likely to be before all…
My third day ever of teaching was on September 11, 2001. I was teaching Latin to fifth through eighth grade students at Plato Academy in Niles, Illinois just outside Chicago. I only taught twice a week; my first day had been the previous Tuesday, the day after Labor Day. Given my lack of teaching experience, it was going to be a tough day no matter what else happened. But as we know, all hell broke loose that day. None of…
Easter 2020 I’m not certain the first time I heard a John Prine song, but I’m pretty sure the first time I listened to a John Prine song was in my father’s car in the parking lot of an evangelical church in the Poconos. My father started attending there after my mother died. I wasn’t Christian at the time, but I was curious and wanted to be supportive. I don’t recall too much about the service aside from taking communion,…
On a good day Thucydides is an inscrutable read in the Greek. Despite this, or maybe because of it, the Histories of Thucydides are monument of ancient historiography. Many consider Thucydides (ca.460-395 B.C.E.) the first political scientist because of his perceptive analysis of political behavior and its motivations. Although Thucydides was deeply indebted to Homer and Herodotus, especially the latter, his eight books on the Peloponnesian War represent the West’s best first efforts at writing history from a scientific, objective…
I had the good fortune of hearing Professor George E. Tinker, Native American theologian, speak on the matter of violence and war in the United States. Though it has been decades since I heard him, I remember vividly his analysis of our relationship with violence as an addiction. He said that getting over an addiction takes as long as the addiction existed. That idea has always stuck with me, and I believe it is a useful paradigm for us when…
Birthday of Frederick Douglass English enjoys an abundance of language for many things, largely the result of our inheritance from both Latin and Germanic languages. Thus, we can speak of both justice and righteousness. Sometimes proponents exhort us to use words from one source or the other – see for example George Orwell “Politics and the English Language” (1946). I prefer to relish the diversity and depth of English. What a joy that we can choose between melancholy and ennui…
We all learn it well from early youth on up – there are three branches of government, and through a system of checks and balances none of them are able to dominate the others. The idea of dividing up the power in a political system and then establishing ways for the constituent parts to restrain one another has a long history. Thus, in the Roman Republic there were the people, the senate, and the magistrates, each of which was situated…