In 1968 Mitt Romney allegedly led an alleged assault on an allegedly gay student at his private high school academy during which Mitt allegedly had his alleged friends pin down the allegedly gay student while Mitt allegedly cut off his hair with a pair of scissors. Is anyone surprised that the alleged lame stream liberal effete media would be on this story like glitter on Glee? Of course not. It fits right into their narrative of a heartless Mitt terrorizing homosexuals in his teens, dogs...
Posted by: Rabbi Rami Shapiro
May 11, 2012 - 12:00am
Damn, damn, damn. I don’t know about you but I was planning to enjoy my final months on earth as the Mayan calendar came to an end on December 21, 2012. I got a reverse mortgage on my house, sold the movie rights to all my books, took out massive cash advances on all my credit cards, and received large advances on books I have no intension of writing but whose due dates are December 22, 2012. I was certain that the Mayans were right and the world was coming to an end. I was planning to live...
Posted by: Celebrant Institute
May 7, 2012 - 2:13pm
By Marilyn Rampley
When our children were little, bedtime rituals included a bath, brushing teeth, one last drink, snuggles, thoughts about the day’s blessings and lessons, and reading a picture book. Nighttime kisses, of course, ended the ritual and their sweet dreams began. (Sometimes I drifted off, as well!)
Bedtimes with our grandchildren began with the same script. Somewhere along the way, though, that special good-night time morphed into “Tell Us...
Posted by: JC Peters
May 7, 2012 - 2:03pm
“Close your eyes,” my yoga teacher says. “Don’t open them again for the next 90 minutes.”
We laugh a little, like, Is she serious?
Then she says, “I’m serious. Don’t open your eyes.”
So here we go: sun salutations, lunges, warriors, balancing postures, crow pose, taking our mats to a wall and practicing handstand, returning our mats to where they were (who knew?) and continuing our flow right down into savasana. Eyes closed.
... Posted by: Rabbi Rami Shapiro
May 4, 2012 - 12:00am
I seem to have opened a can of worms, and I invite you worms to post your comments on the blog rather than emailing me directly. I can’t respond to each writer, and I have to move on to other matters, but I have been getting some email about my anti-religion attitude. But this is the last post for awhile. (If you're new to this blog, you can read up on the other posts, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.)
Simply put, a number of writers are saying that living in the South, especially in that...
Posted by: Rabbi Rami Shapiro
May 3, 2012 - 12:00am
This rant was to have only two parts (you can read Part 1 here, and Part 2 here), but private emails I received in response to them necessitated a Part 3.
I received very polite and thoughtful email from several people who described themselves as Interfaith Ministers. They wrote to tell me that I didn’t understand what was happening in the Interfaith world, and that if I did, I would be hopeful.
So I asked what was happening, and learned that some people are taking the best of...
Posted by: Eve Hogan
May 2, 2012 - 11:52am
In the world of personal and spiritual growth there are some terms that have been thrown around so often that they almost have become meaningless, or nebulous at best. “Be here now, be present, be who you are, be authentic, be transparent, just let go, transcend the ego, believe and you shall receive” ... the list goes on. I thought it might be helpful to “unpack” some of the terms and explain some of the concepts, hopefully giving deeper meaning and practical application for them in your...
Posted by: Rabbi Rami Shapiro
May 2, 2012 - 12:00am
I split this blog post into two sections so as to not lose the import of the second part. In “I Have Failed, Part 1” I bemoaned the fact that try as I did to get my students to think critically about the Bible and the God it offers, they still held to their belief that God can do no evil, and all apparent evil done by God and in God’s name is just that, apparent evil, and in fact, when we learn the truth, isn’t evil at all.
I ended that essay with my fear that the world my students...
Posted by: Rabbi Rami Shapiro
May 1, 2012 - 12:00am
I’m grading papers this week. One assignment in my Bible class was to rewrite the end of the Book of Job beginning with the premise that God actually tells Job the truth about Job’s suffering: that it was the result of a wager God made with the Devil to see how much punishment and horror Job could endure before losing faith in God. In the Bible, God never fesses up to Job about this bet.
Some students were wary of rewriting the Bible, but I was pleased that everyone gave it a shot....
Posted by: JC Peters
April 30, 2012 - 11:44am
Earth Day 2012 was just a few weeks ago, and I’ve been thinking about what that means to us now, as yogis and as human beings.
Humans are a funny species: We love to shout “Save the Planet!” as if we were not one of the species needing saving. It makes me think of deep sea shrimp organizing to save the oceans.
Perhaps it’s all the fault of the Bible. God did say, after all:
Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of...
Posted by: Rabbi Rami Shapiro
April 29, 2012 - 12:00am
I spent the last three days with my friend and teacher, Andrew Harvey, at Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville. He was our guest speaker for Wisdom House's annual Mystic Heart Retreat. (Next April we are hosting Matthew Fox).
One of the things Andrew asked us to do is discover what we were most passionate about and then engage with that passion for the good of the planet. I have two passions: books and dogs. I chose to begin with books.
Tomorrow morning I will be opening a...
Posted by: Eve Hogan
April 23, 2012 - 2:47pm
Recently a business associate wrote me an e-mail complaining that I hadn’t yet sent him a document he had requested. I explained to him that I had moved offices and changed computers and was having a difficult time locating the document. His response was that since I was a writer and editor, he was disappointed; he expected me to be more organized.
I had to laugh; if any of you have the same illusions, let me shatter them for you now.
There is no doubt...
Posted by: JC Peters
April 23, 2012 - 2:09pm
As some of you already know, I am a spoken word poet, which means, generally speaking, that I talk about my feelings in front of half-drunk audiences on Monday nights at a neighborhood cafe.
Poetry slams are competitive events in which poets sign up to battle with each other. Random members of the audience hold up scores, much like at the Olympics, and the highest scoring poets go forward to win money or chances to compete at larger venues.
Yes, it’s...
Posted by: Eve Hogan
April 13, 2012 - 2:59pm
I have performed hundreds of weddings and have come to the conclusion (completely unverified) that you can tell a lot about the dynamics of the marriage by how the couple behaves while getting married. One wedding I performed involved a couple that already had a child. While the groom focused on his friends in the audience, the bride focused on their baby and neither of them appeared to be aware of the other. Their marriage only lasted a few years. Sometimes the bride and groom don’t appear...
Posted by: JC Peters
April 13, 2012 - 2:07pm
Lately, I’ve been reading the Tao Te Ching. It’s the seminal text of Taoist philosophy, a system of thought that I’ve been attracted to since I was a stressed out, straight-A university student with two jobs sitting in a class on Eastern religions and learning that there was an entire philosophy devoted to the universal principle of “going with the flow.”
Going with the flow has never been easy for me. I worry a lot, I say yes to everything, I fill my schedule to the brim and forget...
