It must be mandatory that every blogger weighs on Katrina, here goes …

Life is Suffering

I’ve been thinking about this simple phrase for months. Everywhere around me I see suffering; seeing it at the scale of Katrina is rending. I can’t begin to wrap my head around the loss and tragedy.

People Are Worse Than I Think

Its amazing to me how quickly people people beat a path to their soapbox explaining how their way of looking at the world would have made things better — more government, more bush, less bush, less government, more jesus, less jesus, more green, more action, less talk, more compassion, more troops, more guns, less guns, less carbon dioxide, more justice. I have no patience for anyone who wants to extract political profit from human tragedy. In addition to the oppourtunistic self serving hordes, there appears to be an unlimited supply of morons.

People Are Better Than I Think

I love the hero stories of the rescue workers and the people pouring themself out for people they never knew. Anyone who puts themselves in harm’s way for another has my respect and gratitude.

A Closing Thought

I’ve read some eloquent thoughts in the last few days. I’ll share one of my personal favorites.

Parting by Emily Dickinson.
My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If immortality unveil
A third event to me
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

For the last few weeks I’ve been working my way through “The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson.” I had read bits and pieces of her work before but had never tried to work through the entire canon. The more I read, the more amazed I am at both her ability to capture emotions and how thoroughly modern her writing is. (No, I don’t care if you can sing them all to the yellow rose of Texas.)

[Poem Courtesy of the Writers Almanac]

Looks like Paul and Amy had a baby. Congratulations to the happy couple and the new big brother!

There was so much press concerning Hunter S. Thompson’s suicide and subsequent cannon-ization, I thought I would read one of his books. I picked “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”.

I recall having read another Hunter S. Thompson book in the distant past and being completely unimpressed. My theory is that I was too young or too uptight when I read it.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It’s very hard for me to imagine people actually ingesting this amount of drugs and living. For some reason reading the crazy stream of weirdness writing really worked for me. BTW, I have no desire to try and replicate the experience myself although I admit it does sound like it might be fun to trash a rental car.

It’s one of those curious books that has one fulcrum paragraph that jumps out at you as being the most important thing the book has to say.

Acid use aside, we all try to buy “peace and understanding” and most of us find out that what we bought isn’t what we expected it to be. You can replace the word “acid” with religion, consumerism, sex, power or any other experience people seek intending to buy their happiness and peace for three buck a hit.

I liked the book a lot, your results may vary.

The book is illustrated by Ralph Steadman whose works grace my favorite cafe, Hell’s Kitchen.

Marilyn Monroe unplugged.

Note to self: burn tapes made for the therapist.

Happy Belated BlogDay!

BlogDay is a day when people post about five other blogs which are different from their own in some ways.

So while I’m a day late, here is my list.

dylan’s lectionary & grace notes. This blog written by Sarah Dylan Breuer, an anglican postulant, has beautiful meditations on scripture as well as personal insights into Sarah’s passion for justice, the eradication of poverty, and U2.

Velveteen Rabbi. She’s not actually a rabbi, but is a lay leader in her congregation. She offers beautifully written commentary on varied aspects of Judiasm.

Kevin Sites. Kevin offers up a new kind of journalism in his blog. When he talks about Iraq, it’s not from a press briefing room perspective, it’s from the perspective of someone on the ground who has lived the conflict. I wish there was more journalism like this.

Seraphic Secret. This blog is written by a jewish hollywood screenwriter who also happens to also be a conservative and a gun ethusiast. Robert and occasionally his wife write hauntingly about the loss of their son Ariel. The way he has written about his loss has changed the way I look at the world. His courtship stories have amused me to no end since they take place in a world so far removed from my own.

The Religious Policeman. This blog is a biting look at life in Saudi Arabia. The writer now lives in the U.K. and has returned to posting after a long quiet period.

Enjoy.