10 Deep Dives You May Have Missed on Medium
Deep Dives Vol I: Add these recent stories on religious liberty, philosophy, creativity, Christmas, the Goddess, spirituality, and more to your reading list. You’ll be glad you did!
When Religious Liberty Destroys Children’s Futures, by James Finn
Medium’s #1 LGBTQ activist and writer James Finn explores the dark side of Amish life, especially the limitations imposed by the Constitutionally-protected withholding of 21st Century education from Amish children. I usually agree with Jim, but on this one I didn’t. You very well might. I recommend reading his essay, and also our long exchange in the responses. Religious liberty is a complex issue. This essay and response thread may not settle the issue, but, together, they ably expose the complexity.
The Case for Conductivity, by Guerin Asante
The demand for productivity can murder creativity. Conductivity is a better approach that gets the artistic work done without enslaving (and, potentially, sacrificing) the muse. This is a nonfiction essay by beloved Medium poet Guérin Asante.
The Meaning of Love, by Joshua Hehe
Everything you ever wanted to know about love, but never thought to ask. Joshua Hehe is the reigning Medium king of deeply-researched think-pieces on unusual topics. This essay on love is as much a delight for the heart as a light for the mind.
A Masked Beauty — Three Models of Mind and Consciousness, by Nathan Smith
Nathan Smith weaves the theories of Arthur Schopenhauer, Julian Jaynes, and Thomas Metzinger into a braided view of consciousness that will change the way you think about everything. And he does it in only 7 minutes. Wow!
A Marketing Primer For All You New Writers Out There, by Lon Shapiro
Discover the hard truth about Medium. You can’t succeed on Medium if you don’t know this truth. You probably can’t succeed on Medium if you do know this truth, either. That’s what makes it a “hard truth”… Lon Shapiro’s superpower is making you belly-laugh as he delivers the bad news.
New Atheism: An Autopsy, by Ben Sixsmith
The “New Atheism” of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and a million Twitter trolls is dead. The coroner has ruled it a suicide. A brilliant dissection in Arc Digital by Ben Sixsmith.
It’s Got Goblins, Demons, & Witches: It’s the strange history of Christmas!, by Alethea Avery
Whether you’re into saints, saviors, Santa, witches, Krampus, or the sun’s rebirth at Yule, you’ll find something wonderful to celebrate this December in Alethea Avery’s deep historical dive into the winter holidays. Reading this made me happy. What more can you ask from a holiday article?
I love the closing quote:
“Christianity conquered paganism, but paganism infected Christianity.” — Domestic Life in Palestine, by Mary E. Rogers
Your Soul is Born Each Morning, by Rev Dr Sparky
Every essay by the good Rev Dr Sparky is a rope thrown out to save us on the choppy sea of life. Grab hold and pull yourself to safety! Read this essay to catch a glimpse of your “brutally, brilliantly ineffable” soul. It’s really there, and you can feel it.
When God was a Woman, by Elizabeth Childs Kelly
From 50,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE, the Great Mother was the primary deity everywhere on Earth. Restoring the Goddess to the center of global religion/spirituality may be the only way to save the world. If you bristle at the notion of female deity, you’re part of the problem. Be the solution!
How Can We Feel Connected to God if We Don’t Even Talk to Dead People?, by Ken Wilson
All around the world — except in America! — people routinely communicate with dead loved ones. From the recently departed to our ancient ancestors, humans everywhere dream of the dead, pray to, through, and for the dead, and meet the dead in reveries and visions. The dead haunt our homes and our lives. So why, asks Ken Wilson, are (even religious) Americans taught to think of death as an impenetrable barrier, and the experience of after-death communication a delusion? Is it any wonder we struggle to experience God when we can’t even embrace the company of our beloved dead?
BONUS RECOMMENDATION:
My favorite new Medium publication (new to me, anyway, as I just discovered it in November) is Interfaith Now:
Edited/published by Allison J. van Tilborgh , IN publishes high-quality, thought-provoking articles and essays along a diverse spectrum of religious ideas, identity, and experience, from Baha’i, to Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Mormonism, and beyond!
This is the first in what will likely become an occasional series (i.e., not published on any set schedule, just whenever). My goal is to bring attention to exceptional reads on Medium that may not have received the readership they deserve. If you follow me (and as of this writing almost 14,000 of you do), then you’re probably a fan of topics like philosophy, spirituality, religion, psychology, and creativity, the mainstays of my writing here on Medium. You should read these other writers, too! They’re fantastic!
