Categories
favorites spirituality

I Am a “Being Humanist”

We’re born. We grow. We learn. We grieve. We reemerge. We feel helpless. We overflow with joy. We dream. We fail to live up to our ideals. We transcend. We hesitate to trust our capacities. We shatter into a thousand pieces of love. We sleepwalk. We awaken, over and over again, living our fully and […]

Categories
growth life nepal spirituality

Escaping the Kinetic Bounds of our Birth

We are to a large extent what our parents make of us. While of course we are all magnificently unique beings, and have varying degrees of agency in terms of how we live our lives, it is hard to deny the effect that our upbringing has on the eventualities of our beliefs and ultimately our […]

Categories
favorites speaking the truth spirituality

Delcaration of Theistic Independence

I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in a higher being. I don’t believe in True Nature, The Absolute or any of the other mystical names atributed to God-like capacities. I don’t believe Jesus was the son of God any more than you or I might have been, should God have existed in the […]

Categories
america

Bibles for China – Driving Through the Evangelical South

I’ve been driving for a couple of days now, leaving Chicago early Thursday morning, spending the night with an old friend of mine in Memphis, and then driving again today through Arkansas and eastern Texas to Palestine, TX (pronounced pal’-e-steen).  It’s been strange driving through the south.  I’ve never driven through Arkansas or Texas before […]

Categories
on traveling

Travel Gleanings

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” ~Martin Buber~ I’m on a plane returning to the states right now and thinking about what I’ve learned on this trip. What good is travel if it doesn’t fundamentally change who we are? This is the first time I’ve actually traveled around the world, […]

Categories
on traveling speaking the truth sri lanka

Give Me Some Hate!

I think I need to throw out a counterbalancing entry here because both sides of the coin seem to be true here for me, I love it and I am hating it! Yesterday was a rougher day. I did let myself sleep in while in Anuradapura but then took the bus to Kandy at a […]

Categories
Jewish ukraine

They Won

I’m a little upset lately, in seeing life going on here in Ukraine without many Jews being present. This area used to have many, many Jews and now they are largely gone. As I mentioned in my last post, Khotyn used to have 24 synagogues and now there is barely one. 18,000 Jews reduced to […]

Categories
family Jewish ukraine

Khotyn – Cultural Longing and Identification

I returned again to Khotyn yesterday evening. I’m not exactly certain as to why, but perhaps that will unfold as I am here. The excuse I told myself in planning to come here was that I wanted to photograph more of the remaining Jewish people here in town. I’ve been itching to put together images […]