From the Heart and the Brain

(Christ and the Woman of Samaria at the Well, 1640) Art can be a way of thinking, especially when the thoughts cannot keep up with the input...

  Standing up to the abuse of power is inherently difficult. It can also be inspiring. People who do so often look back proudly on their act...

I tell you, the old-fashioned doctor who treated all diseases has completely disappeared, now there are only specialists, and they advertise...

  Tuberculosis and HIV. Various-colored glasses. Baboons. Time with my daughter. Rice and beans and fried tomatoes. I wanted to reflect a fe...

In complex, modern societies, the relationship between reality and our representations of reality—between what Lippmann called the “real env...

When it is no longer possible to stretch those so very elastic threads of the historical rationale any farther, when an action is manifestly...

Blessings  בְּרָכָה Background: The Arabic word بركة (barakah) has several meanings and carries significant theological and cultural mean...

"Scarcity and abundance have as much to do with the form of exchange as with how much material wealth is at hand. Scarcity appears when...

"We need to keep some parts of our social, cultural, and spiritual life out of the marketplace. We must not convert all gift labors int...

  I am reminded of what seemed so impossible in 1986: The end of apartheid in South Africa. Perhaps that is why only we young people were ou...