CrossCurrents - The Journal of Addiction and Mental Health articles from March 1999

CrossCurrents - The Journal of Addiction and Mental Health archives from March 1999

Listening with the ear of the heart.(achieving unity of mind and heart to gain spirituality)
March 22, 1999... I "Acquire a heart and you shall be saved." These are the words of Abba Pambo, a desert father of the fourth century. According to the desert tradition, the focus of ascetical practice and prayer was ordered to the acquiring of a heart,...

Schisms, murder, and hungry ghosts in Shangra-La.(internal conflicts in Tibetan Buddhist sect)
March 22, 1999... Millions of Buddhist monks have been killed, imprisoned, tortured, or driven into exile by the Communist Chinese since the 1950s in a deliberate, systematic destruction of a culture and a religion. The pacifist Buddhist monks are about as...

Martin Buber and Jewish-Arab peace.(German Jewish philosopher and theologian)
March 22, 1999... The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and the establishment of the state of Israel were separated by about half a year (January and May 1949). Writing in 1938, Gandhi had not been sympathetic to the Jewish national home in Palestine since he...

Risks and faith.(Jewish-Arab relations)
March 22, 1999... I recently read a Jewish peace activist's eyewitness account of the Israeli army's destruction of a Palestinian home.(1) No stranger to such stories, I was nonetheless upset by its distressing details. The walls of the house fell one by one,...

The moral primacy of basic respect.
March 22, 1999... We hear a lot about the word "respect" these days. Employers are supposed to respect their employees, children are told to respect their eiders, depressed people are advised to respect themselves, environmentalists tell us to respect nature,...

Does faith have a future?
March 22, 1999... It is certainly worth asking whether faith has a future; moreover, the question is one we need to have the courage to address. A necessary preliminary to such a venture is to be somewhat clearer about the meaning of the question - and thus...

So many voices in my head.(personal narrative of experience with the notion of community)
March 22, 1999... My home is in Pittsburgh's Monongahela Valley, in the old mill town of McKeesport, which was once the hub of Western Pennsylvania's thriving steel industry. Some months ago, reflecting on what I might say in a forthcoming lecture at Bluffton...

The Mirror for Francis of Assisi.(poem)
March 22, 1999... How poor you must be, you make so much of me. Before the fissure, over a rock, the shadow of a man a tree or a hawk lengthens and shrinks as it circles, pauses, and drifts. Hunter, I am no game. Put away the arrows, the long hunting...

Conference call.(poem)
March 22, 1999... "God is in the details" or so Mies van der Rohe proposed concerning architecture. And certainly that sunrise-glinted golden dome above the slanting red terrazzo roof beyond my hotel window glass reminds me of just how this may be true. But what...

Thomas Merton's contemplative struggle: bridging the abyss to freedom.(author, social critic and religious leader)
March 22, 1999... by George A. Kilcourse, Jr. Thirty years after his death, how does one gauge Thomas Merton's continuing appeal? On October 4, 1998, his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, achieved the status of a modern classic, still in print on...

The Seven Storey Mountain.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Thirty years after his death, how does one gauge Thomas Merton's continuing appeal? On October 4, 1998, his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, achieved the status of a modern classic, still in print on its fiftieth anniversary and...

Does the papacy have a future?
March 22, 1999... by Jean Francois Nothomb Gary MacEoin's book (The Papacy and the People of God, New York: Orbis, 1998, $12.95 [paper]) is a major resource for anyone thinking seriously about the possibilities of the papacy in the next millennium. Before...

The Papacy and the People of God.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Gary MacEoin's book (The Papacy and the People of God, New York: Orbis, 1998, $12.95 [paper]) is a major resource for anyone thinking seriously about the possibilities of the papacy in the next millennium. Before discussing the book, however, I...

Converting to religion after its demise: thoughts on Marcel Gauchet and his American reception.(French philosopher and author)
March 22, 1999... by Steven Englund A superb English translation of (most of) Marcel Gauchet's thirteen-year-old classic of political and social thought that rocked France, The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion, has recently...

The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion.(Review)
March 22, 1999... A superb English translation of (most of) Marcel Gauchet's thirteen-year-old classic of political and social thought that rocked France, The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion, has recently appeared in Princeton...

Queering church, churching queers.
March 22, 1999... The debates about Christianity and sexuality rage everywhere today. Among many gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people - those I'm calling queer - inside the church, the conventional wisdom is that the loudest voices are those which...

Sex and the Church: Gender, Homosexuality, and the Transformation of Christian Ethics.(Review)
March 22, 1999... The debates about Christianity and sexuality rage everywhere today. Among many gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people - those I'm calling queer - inside the church, the conventional wisdom is that the loudest voices are those which...

Religion Is a Queer Thing: A Guide to the Christian Faith for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered People.(Review)
March 22, 1999... The debates about Christianity and sexuality rage everywhere today. Among many gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people - those I'm calling queer - inside the church, the conventional wisdom is that the loudest voices are those which...

The Bible as a site for struggle: rethinking Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza.(author)
March 22, 1999... The title of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's new book, Sharing Her Word: Feminist Biblical Interpretation in Context (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998. 232pp. $23.00 [paper]) alludes to a speech by Wisdom's suitor who seeks, among other benefits,...

Sharing Her Word: Feminist Biblical Interpretation in Context.(Review)
March 22, 1999... The title of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's new book, Sharing Her Word: Feminist Biblical Interpretation in Context (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998. 232pp. $23.00 [paper]) alludes to a speech by Wisdom's suitor who seeks, among other benefits,...

The (Magic) Kingdom of God.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Michael Budde, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997. viii+177pp. $35.00 Finally someone has written a realistic appraisal of what we are up against. The thesis of political scientist Michael Budde's book might seem obvious: the global...

Truth and Progress, Philosophical Papers, vol. 3.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Richard Rorty, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 368pp. $18.95 (paper). For some twenty years now Richard Rorty has been urging his readers to take seriously John Dewey's vision of the relation of philosophy to the rest of...

Kaddish.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Leon Wieseltier, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. 588pp. $27.50 (cloth). What is remarkable about Leon Wieseltier's Kaddish - both as a book and as a publishing phenomenon - is its mix of studiousness, irony, passion, and sheer randomness:...

The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Nehemia Polen, Northvale, N.J., and Jerusalem: Jason Aronson, 1994, 1998. 232pp. $25.00 (cloth). Jewish mysticism teaches that when the world was created sacred vessels exploded. To repair and complete the creation, human beings must...

The Solace of Fierce Landscapes.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Belden C. Lane, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 304pp. $25.00 (cloth). The Solace of Fierce Landscapes is a moving and sturdy meditation on the desert. The desert is an outer place of starkness, terror, privation, and beauty; it...

The Presence of Absence: On Prayers and an Epiphany.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Doris Grumbach, Boston: Beacon Press, 1998. 138pp. $18.00 (cloth). The desire for solitude seems to be strong in us, even though we humans are gregarious. There are many reasons to want to be alone; tradition suggests that seeking the...

Quarantine.(Review)
March 22, 1999... Jim Crace, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998. 243pp. $25.00 (cloth). The desire for solitude seems to be strong in us, even though we humans are gregarious. There are many reasons to want to be alone; tradition suggests that seeking...