Letters to the Editor
buddenbooks
Published Letters: 49 Editor's Choice: 4
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Are you keeping track?
[Read the article: Camille's back!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I vote against continuing Ms. Paglia's column.
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Sara Miles's faith
[Read the article: My daily bread]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am so glad that Sara Miles is taking on the struggle of trying to explain her faith to the community from which she comes. Nowhere, at least in this article, does she claim that Jesus is The Answer, nor does she claim virtues for Christianity (as a religion of the world it is a human creation, I think) that don’t exist, nor does she claim supremacy for Christianity. Rather, she talks of how Jesus and the stories of Jesus touch her core and how they connect her to understandings she didn’t have before: profound ones, but not exclusive ones. Hers seems a very contemporary, very urgent Christianity that speaks not to individual salvation or absolute truth but that rather points us to our interconnectivity, the flesh and blood we all share. As a number of theologians have noted, in our world, it the search for faith should not be to find a Truth which puts down other truths but to open ourselves to the More, if you will, which compels us to shed our comfortable ways, to understand that we are less and more than a collection of individuals. Others have also described a “thin place” where, when we are at it, we can sense glimmerings of that which is beyond us. Finding that place once, we may be compelled to try to find it again. Paths of faith that are of our own culture perhaps provide a fruitful metaphorical direction.
Jesus was at least a person who found that thin place and moved back and forth in and out of it, bringing from it some kind of awareness of the nature of goodness. His truths are truths which exist in most, if not all, religions, and are not confined to religions. As all human institutions do, religions have structures which are marred and scarred by the greed and lust for power and a desire for acceptance and the cruelty and meanness of their human inhabitants. But in fact, by participating in these religious institutions, we can compel ourselves to confront ourselves week after week in the company of others who may or may not be of similar mind and interest. In our fragmented society in which we have very little that makes us really look at and involve ourselves in the lives of community, this alone is quite a useful thing to do. If we sense further the humbling awareness of the More (for want of a more suitable word), that is even better.
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Christopher Hitchens's take on God
[Read the article: God grief]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We humans appear finally to be exploring new and different roads to a better understanding of our general nature, a search which will hopefully lead us to less destructive collective action. Popular roads to go down are those which tend to blame religion, God, and ideologies of all sorts. Christopher Hitchens is clearly one who singles out God. But in fact this is scapegoating rather than exploring. More useful are the works of people who tryto find an understanding of the underpinnings of human nature, ordinary human nature if you will, as it manifests in non-pathological individuals and in groups which may or may not become pathological. They ask questions like: Why do fairly normal humans turn beliefs into murderous ideologies; why don’t humans act more ethically; why is human empathy limited? Why are we so sure we are right? Why can’t very smart people see the damage they are wreaking? What can we do to better understand ourselves and our own destructive tendencies? Books like Hitchens’s tend to set us against each other yet again, defending and entrenching our “either/or” mentalities rather than growing in our understanding of ourselves and just perhaps in our abilities to control our dark sides. E.K. Buddenhagen
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Not just national
[Read the article: Power to the people, 2.0]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As a proud mother, I would like to point out that Deval Patrick became governor of Massachusetts with hefty use of an online campaign that organized people around the state via the internet for issues discussions and fund-raising and organizing and spreading the news. Deval Patrick still employs the internet to keep the citizens of Massachusetts directly involved. It is actually more decentralized, i believe, than current MoveOn efforts since it provides citizens with a place to bring their own concerns to the fore and to have discussions about them which not incidentally keep the Governor informed.
I'm not Deval Patrick's mother, I'm Charles SteelFisher's mother. He was the Director of New Media, the arm of the campaign in charge of the very successful online effort.
E. K. Buddenhagen
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Pre-Elmo Sesame Street
[Read the article: The littlest shoppers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My daughter watched Sesame Street in its first years, and, yes, when she was one and half or two, not four or five. If I'm not mistaken, Sesame Street only started marketing its stuff when politicians succeeded in underfunding it and insisting that it pay a hunk of its own way. Before that, my daughter and I and later my son watched Sesame Street together looking forward to seeing Gordon and Maria and Oscar and Mr. Hooper without being driven to buy the stuff. I don't remember when Cookie Monster et. al. became purchasable dolls, but even when they first became available, Sesame Street was not overmarketed. Now, alas,it is. It seems a golden rule of our society: it ain't worth anything if you can't sell it to the gullible. Our culture has truly run amok.
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please add me to the list of those who've found this article embarassing at best
[Read the article: My hapless African rebel]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Nick Wadham is supposed to write about Africa? He needs someonr to take him by the hand and start his desperately-needed education by showing him that Africans are not cartoon characters.
EKB