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City With No Children
I’ve loved this song from the moment it first came through the car’s speakers. From Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, it speaks of desperation and the isolation, trapped feel of that location. Beautifully haunting, youthful, aging, wistful and anguished. Pure pop genius. It has lingered lately. That sense expanded beyond the suburbs, to the country, the continent.…
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Personal Religion
The new American definition of religious freedom, and therefore religion itself, is total, personal faith. No one in their right mind would say that Kim Davis defines Christianity. They are, however, eager to say that she is practicing her faith. She is being a Christian. Yesterday I wrote about what we should mean when we talk about religion. Today I…
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Weaning From Outrage
As I drove north, along I-70 into Indianapolis, then taking I-69 all the way up to the wilds of the back roads north of Lansing, I listened to podcast after podcast. It was a time to catch up on the backlog, and it seems that a trio of shows has cultivated a moment, a sense…
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Why Bernie Sanders hates the media
Does Sen. Bernie Sanders hate the media? According to Paul Heintz, the political editor for Seven Days, the answer is yes. In this interview for On the Media, Heintz shows Sen. Sanders’ penchant for calling out the media and his ongoing distrust of it. He argues that “the media have never really noticed how Sanders sees them. Because…
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Why the GOP should shift its position on guns
The broken record we’re playing is getting old and the country we all value is disappearing to the point in which our 2 major parties are both sloganeering that we must “take our country back” from the other. Why has this point been missed by so many? That both of our major parties feel disempowered?…
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One example of how the Bible is political
Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us; look, and see our disgrace! Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to aliens. We have become orphans, fatherless; our mothers are like widows. We must pay for the water we drink; the wood we get must be bought. With a yoke on our necks…
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This is the shift
We are shifting toward enlightenment. Not The Enlightenment, for we are leaving much of that behind. But a certain enlightened view of the world that is more than logic and rational, ideological and fearful, more than cynical and compassionate. We’re moving toward being real and being forgiving. I know this sounds pie in the sky…
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Why the lion?
The reason we can condemn an asshole who goes halfway around the world to kill a lion is because it’s a safe thing to condemn. It is safe to say animal cruelty is bad. It is safe to say what he did doesn’t really count as hunting. It is safe to say rich people can get…