Does that make them wrong?
Most of us never dare find out.
Archive for the ‘Heart and spirit’ Category
The choices people make…
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 10, 2008
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Holocaustism
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 5, 2008
David Kelsey rails on, quite justifiably, about the latest manifestations of Holocaust – as – Judaism.
Talk about a desecration — coming, and going.
Posted in Faith and Works, Heart and spirit | Leave a Comment »
Oh my. The Giants!
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 3, 2008
People are screaming on my block in New Jersey, just a few miles from Giants Stadium. Screaming.
I was driving home from Acme with some orange juice and, okay, I checked my BlackBerry one more time to see if the Giants could do the impossible… and they had.
And they did.
And if you don’t see the human interest story — the plain-vanilla, gets-no-respect coach… the overshadowed younger-brother quarterback… the team of no-names picked for a .500 season and perhaps one playoff round right up through the late fall — then you have no heart.
Posted in Americana, Heart and spirit | 2 Comments »
Yes, the weather is still miserable in New York.
Posted by Ron Coleman on January 30, 2008
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I have never thought, not for a second, that “life is a but a dream.” There’s nothing dreamy about it to me. I can tell the furshlugginer difference! But I like what Poe says here, and I wish the last two lines of this half-stanza had been the first two, so that he would conclude with the same sentiment J.K. Rowling does when, in the seventh Harry Potter book, Harry has a dialogue with the dead Professor Dumbledore. It is profoundly resolving — almost too good, Harry believes, to be true. And, after all, his mentor is dead.
Haryry asks him, then, is this moment real? Or is it all in his head? To which Dumbledore replies — of course it is all in your head, Harry. But that does not mean it isn’t real.
UPDATE: The sun is out! And it’s not just in my head. (In fact it’s still rather dusky in there.)
Posted in Heart and spirit | 4 Comments »
East River at 42nd
Posted by Ron Coleman on January 29, 2008
After the 1 PM minyan around the corner this afternoon I kept walking east on 42nd to my old haunt, the East River, which I used to visit further uptown, hoping for a little inspiration. Here now at this latitude along Gotham’s grid I am in the shadow of the wicked United Nations, but the day was suitably gray and drab anyway such that I did not need the black emanations of that marble slab of hate to drive the darkening of my affect.
Okay, it’s not that bad. It’s been a lot worse. But I should have gone straight to the office and just sat down and simulated work until it turned into real work. I didn’t. I proceeded past the News Building, where my phone rings, across the Murray Hill neighborhood, probably passing into Kips Bay depending on your interpretation of the matter, with my top button secured and, nouveau-noire enough, my BlackBerry as my only companion.
As I walked east a soft mist covered my face and threatened my camera, and my reverie, but there was something decent enough about being removed from the more businesslike aspects of the marginally corporate block where I now work, if only just long enough to wet my felt hat and the shoulders of my all-weather overcoat with the gentle rain. There was no reason to stay there by myself, anyway.
I can’t tell you the reason my crude BlackBerry camera returned a pink-tinged overcast to the sky over Queens. But that’s what I came back to the office with. And that’s what I wanted to share with you.
Posted in Heart and spirit, Metropolis | 5 Comments »
Introduction to Spiritual Discipline
Posted by Ron Coleman on January 28, 2008
Avakesh wrestles with a definition of “the spiritual.”
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Not of men
Posted by Ron Coleman on January 25, 2008
It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God only.
— William Blake
Posted in Heart and spirit | 5 Comments »
Why even bother showing up?
Posted by Ron Coleman on January 24, 2008
Joel Waldfogel explains how Tiger Woods is so good, other golfers hardly even bother trying.
What does this mean for the nongolfing world? It’s generally agreed that people work harder when they are paid for performance. Anyone who has ever languished in a Paris cafe—where service compris translates roughly as “the Republic of France mandates a minimum 15 percent tip regardless of service quality”—can appreciate the power of incentives. But the effects of incentives appear to be muted when the incentives are based on relative performance and the competition is tough. We’re taught that quitters never win, but if the evidence from golf is any indication, it might be more accurate, if less pithy, to say that expected losers are more likely to quit, or at least not perform as well. If you’re running a business, and you have the opportunity to hire the Tiger Woods of office work, you’re not going to pass up the chance. But Brown’s study suggests you might want to consider its effect on your other workers’ performance. Steak knives might not cut it as second prize.
Everybody has to feel he’s got a fighting chance.
Posted in Heart and spirit, Scientificus, Sisyphus | 1 Comment »
Individualism versus individuality
Posted by Ron Coleman on January 22, 2008
Over in the discussion at another blog I am having trouble getting some people to recognize that the distinction between individualism and individuality is more than semantic. I am adapting from my comments there to raise the issue here.
Is “individualism” a desideratum at all? I think perhaps it is not. Now, individuality is a fact and is something to be embraced. But individualism is primarily defined thus: “Belief in the primary importance of the individual and in the virtues of self-reliance and personal independence.” That is: Assertion of the primary importance of the individual is primary.
There are many paths to living a meaningful life (which is not to say that there is infinite number of paths). Individuality is unique to humans, and God surely must expect us to utilize it in our lives — individuality, that is — but not to make individual expression the purpose of our lives, which is individualism, a sort of narcissism.
Posted in Faith and Works, Heart and spirit, Homo sapiens | 3 Comments »
What it is
Posted by Ron Coleman on January 21, 2008
I wrote this post on Dean’s World in September, 2006, and I had forgotten about it. While pondering the question again, however, I came upon it. It generated a good discussion there and then, and we hardly resolved the issue, and we never will. I have updated it a little, though, because I’m a little older now.
What is love?
The easy ones, don’t even tell me about — such as how you love your kids. That’s very real, but let’s face it, it’s basically hard wired, though if you are fortunate, it grows in intensity as your children develop into genuine people whom you can love in the way I mean to ask the question about here.
What is it that makes you stick to people you love — care about their welfare the way you do your own, enjoy watching them eat, bleed red blood for them?
What makes you keep doing all these things no matter how much of that blood you lose?
Posted in Heart and spirit, Sisyphus | Leave a Comment »
