Sure, we all know what integrity is: honesty, sincerity, morally upright, etc. Merriam-Webster defines it as: firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : incorruptibility. But somehow, I feel there’s more to it than that. This essay is the sort of exercise that Plato engaged in: taking concepts as real things, […]
I’m reaching that age when one’s body starts to fall apart. It could happen any day — that first stroke, that first cancer diagnosis. I can’t pretend that it’s not going to happen. I’m so blessed that it hasn’t happened yet. As a result, I am savoring every moment of happiness. My family is a […]
Noah’s Ark — the more you think about it, the more you realize how impossible it is. Do religious scriptures have any meaning at all? More and more, I come to see the answer as negative. Let’s start with the Bible, which is chock full of contradictions. Perhaps the most important one is also perhaps the […]
A lot of my readers are fathers and will have experienced similar thoughts to mine: the miracle of life, the wonder of witnessing a new human being, etc. So what I’m expressing is probably nothing new, but I feel like expressing it anyway. One of my first thoughts at seeing my newborn son was that […]
After the Pol Pot auto-genocide, Christian missionaries must have thought that the surviving Cambodians would be easy targets for conversion to Christianity. When I first arrived in Cambodia in 1995, I saw a traumatized people. There were almost no psychiatrists to treat the PTSD that was rampant across the country. Not only had most of […]
This is not a political screed about abortion. I have placed it in my ‘Religion’ category. My thinking was stimulated when a friend told me that I would someday see my deceased daughter in the afterlife. My first question was: “She was 7 when she died. Will she still be a cute 7-year-old whenever I […]
I was prompted to write this blog by the ads I see asking for donations for aid to Gaza. We keep hearing about the impending famine in Gaza, or lack of medicaI treatment, but I’m not hearing anything about famine among the Hamas soldiers. They are receiving food and medical treatment. It’s pretty clear that […]
Have you had a peak experience? Peak experiences have been described by many authors, for example, Kendra Cherry in Verywellmind.com (2023). Fulfillment: Peak experiences generate positive emotions and are intreinsically rewarding. Significance: Peak experiences lead to an increase in personal awareness and understanding and can serve as a turning point in a person’s life. Spiritual: […]
“Power is perceived as a reward for high stocks of merit rather than an outgrowth of a popular mandate.” This quote comes from Sebastian Strangio’s Hun Sen’s Cambodia, in his description of the age-old power structure in Cambodia. A well-connected Cambodian billionaire may have become rich on the back of all sorts of ill-gotten gains, […]
In recent years, the evangelical right wing has embraced attitudes and behaviors 180 degrees antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. Where Jesus taught people to ‘love their neighbor’, evangelicals hate blacks, Hispanics, Jews, LGBTQs, immigrants, and anyone who does not look or think exactly like them. This behavior is pointed out and condemned a lot […]