By Susan | Published:
February 8, 2012
There are so many biographies out there. Should I start the new one of Steve Jobs that everyone seems to be reading? What about getting the recent one of Catherine the Great, instead ? I’ve always wanted to learn more about her. Or what about reading the new Metaxas biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a book [...]
Posted in Books, Theology |
By Susan | Published:
February 4, 2012
Dietrich Bonhoeffer A few years ago I read about Bonhoeffer’s ideas around “cheap grace.” Church life can become safe and comfortable. So many of us attend church every Sunday, enjoy the service and coffee hour together, but these pleasures are a “cheap grace” when there is little else done together other than worry about finances periodically. [...]
By Susan | Published:
January 12, 2012
“Travel is glamorous but only in retrospect” says Paul Theroux. I would change this slightly to say that travel is glamorous but only when told later in a story. This past New Year’s Eve I was at the Eiffel Tower with a friend, Ruth, who is my age. She had journeyed all the way from [...]
By Susan | Published:
December 10, 2011
I don’t think so. Here is a story: In March 2008 my three brothers and I stood by father’s body as he lay for viewing in the funeral home. One brother asked for us to do something unexpected; he asked that we say a prayer for my father. This was an unusual request because he [...]
By Susan | Published:
November 27, 2011
A friend told me a bad-luck story of his artist-friend. I found it compelling and wanted to write it down. Of course, as I did so I embellished the story and added my own details. It was compelling to me because even though the artist’s outer world became smaller, his inner world did not. He did not [...]
By Susan | Published:
October 16, 2011
Recently I was very interested to read a New York Times article (Oct. 9, 2011) about the celebrated atheist, and essayist, Christopher Hitchens, who is dying of cancer. He has written books with titles such as: God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Hitchens now confesses that he cannot eat much or drink alcohol [...]
By Susan | Published:
October 9, 2011
A few weeks ago in the Palliative care ward I sat with a woman who had the same clear intelligent eyes as the woman above — only she was much older (in her nineties). We introduced ourselves and spoke about the weather and where we each born and raised. There was a moment of silence and she [...]
By Susan | Published:
September 18, 2011
I volunteer on the palliative care floor in a local hospital. Hospice volunteers are trained to to enter the the space of dying person with no personal agenda: no words of wisdom to convery, no advice to impart. Each visit is so unique. For me it is like taking a journey each time where I don’t [...]
By Susan | Published:
August 17, 2011
”For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” Robert Louis Stevenson This summer I joined a “Scottish Odyssey” organized by Gillian Schoemaker, a native of Scotland who lives now in Pennsylvania. I had travelled with her and 12 others to Egypt [...]
By Susan | Published:
July 8, 2011
When I was in Japan last year I learned that many of the Japanese have relaxed “pick and choose” attitude towards aspects of organized religion. They have an innate regard for Shintoism and its practices of connecting with the deities that they believe reside in the mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, etc of the natural world. [...]
