Wrote this several years ago and was reminded of it today: Existential Alphabet A is for Angst, that Dizzying Freedom B is for Being, its Possibility and its Tedium C is for the Character of Conscience as Call D is for Dasein, almost Any Existence at All E is for Existential, it’s What We Are And EContinue reading “Existential Alphabet”
Tag Archives: Freedom
Book: The Personalism of John Paul II
One of my very favourite organizations, the Hildebrand Project, has just released this little book titled The Personalism of John Paul II. I read it today and here’s the brief review I wrote of it on Amazon:
What to celebrate?
Today is the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, which is a feast day the Church initiated in by Pope Pius XII in 1955 as a counter-celebration to the communists’ May Day.
“Be a Jew, forever!”
On this date in 1977, Shimon Peres became the 8th Prime Minister of Israel. As Shmuel Rosner wrote in this New York Times article, “Mr. Peres began his life in Vishneva, a village on the border of modern-day Poland and Belarus. When he left for Palestine in 1934, under his original name, Shimon Persky, hisContinue reading ““Be a Jew, forever!””
Relishing freedom
Today my friend and I had a socially distanced picnic on the front lawn of the church behind my house because this is something that is still permitted and it’s worthwhile to relish the opportunities we do have amidst the circumscription of our freedom.
Does your city inhabit you?
What a silly, inverted question. And what could possibly make me ask it? The answer is this anecdote at the end of Aharon Appelfeld’s memoir Table for One: Under the Light of Jerusalem:
My parents have been #StayingHome for 30+ years
Every now and again someone will ask me how my parents and brother are doing in Calgary amidst the pandemic and I laugh to myself because my parents have been thoroughly home-based for more than thirty years.
We keep celebrating
“Most Jews throughout history have not been free, whether from murderous regimes or famines or pandemics. What we have been is devoted to the idea that we deserve to be.” – Alana Newhouse This article from which I quoted above is one of my favourites I’ve read recently. In it, Alana Newhouse reflects: “The PassoverContinue reading “We keep celebrating”
Our education in leisure
“We have come to accept compulsory military service in peacetime for the sake of national security. Am I too bold in suggesting the idea of compulsory adult education in leisure time for the sake of spiritual security?” — Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel How do you spend your leisure? I love this question.
Amanda Achtman 