A Different Perspective
Personal essay, memoir, poetry, what’s going on in your community. The world from your view. I will not request stories — or edit them! — but am happy to include your piece. Give a shout out on twitter @JustThinkingNow or send a note to [email protected]
A Psychology and Theology of Clergy Abuse
In her essay on “Place in Fiction” Southern writer Eudora Welty writes about places and regions that confine and define. This seems to me…to be a profound psychological statement. Perhaps there is no region of the country where authors have so captured the feel, stench and agony of place as twentieth century Southern writers. ¶ These days in the media, I am seeing names of places in Western Pennsylvania that I knew well as a young man just discharged from the Navy. These include: Portage, Hollidaysburg, Altoona, Roaring Springs, Loretto, Gallitzin, Orchard Lake and others.
charles mccullagh2 days ago
Listening to the Lady from Sicily
I heard the young guys off in the corner telling harmless Jesus jokes, apparently borrowed from some faintly civilized meme contest on…Facebook. The grandson in the midst was ordering everyone into a Conga line, destined to wait patiently for a stick-on Ninja Turtle tattoo. The five-year-old eventually marked everyone in the place. We are still wearing the scars. ¶ The lady and man of the house were wrestling with a lamb shank and ham hock and everything in between. I was witnessing a feast in the making. I was a paying particular attention to a subtle dish she invented on the fly for cod and olives in a marinate that was the…charles mccullaghMar 29
The Punishing Psychology of Wanting
The Jungian psychologist begins the class on Ambition, Limitation, and the Desire for a Significant Life by doing his best, understated…imitation of the Spice Girls and their much parodied and maligned chorus of “I want, I want, I want.” The teacher offers this soft, melodious anthem with such a yearning and wistful fervor that I half expect the Spice Girls to show up in the flesh, draped in that untidy, horizontal textile look, as if the group had spent the evening hanging out with Falstaff in sleazy, East London pubs. ¶ I hold my breath and check the exits and the entrances, hoping for a revelation.charles mccullaghMar 23
The Affair
Her name is Isabel. I’ve known about her my entire life; she is the neighbor who slept with my father when I was a baby. Isabel was also…married, they were good friends of my parents. There still are so many photos of the whole crowd, at picnics by the river, at cocktail parties, neighborhood gatherings. ¶ I felt responsible for this affair my entire childhood. I must have cried a lot. I was in the way. I made my mother unappealing…. ¶ I am 55 now. I know I am not responsible for my father’s affair with the neighbor, carried out… 55 years ago, now.
Anna HerringtonMar 23
Pope John Paul II, Love Letters and the Voice of the Feminine
It’s just another day at the office. The morning has been a bit of a slog, with me knocking around the Council of Nicaea in 787 AD…, listening to the 350 bishops who were sitting in a divine circle, mumbling about the trinity and reflecting on the meaning of two circles that share the same center, with one inside the other. This was metaphor on top of theology on top of geometry. ¶ I can’t help hearing the clerical voices denouncing the wild stories that come from the poets and pagan tongues. The clerics tell the assembled that they should not come quickly to utterance, using easy words and descriptions that come from the…charles mccullaghFeb 17
Apparently, Nestle CEO Tim Brown, says he wants to **increase** the amount of water Nestle takes…
From The Guardian:from California for bottled water, regardless of how devastating the drought is. ¶ From The Guardian: ¶ “The fact is, if I stop bottling water tomorrow, people would buy another brand of bottled water,” Brown said in a discussion with a Nasa hydrologist on 89.3 KPCC radio. “People need to hydrate. As the second largest bottler in the state, we’re filling a role many others are filling. It’s driven by consumer demand, it’s driven by an on-the-go society that needs to hydrate.Anna HerringtonMay 15, 2015
I CAN REMEMBER WHEN SEX WAS SAFE
AND FLYING WASN’TI went to ‘Sweet-16’ parties in the 1940’s — became pretty good with the ‘rhumba’, the ‘foxtrot’, even the ‘samba’. Although shy, I definitely liked girls — liked them a lot — and started ‘dating’ in the 50's! Marilyn Monroe was going strong. It must have been hard work, she being the favorite fantasy of so many of us young guys! ¶ The famous shot of her you see above actually involves a very potent illusion that few except us old educated geezers know about: The force lifting her skirt up was…
Alfred Fiks, Ph.D. PurdueNov 9, 2015
The Guillotine Story
On Barbies, Marie Antoinette, and Being Left Home Alone ¶ The guillotine was sitting on the kitchen table when I returned home from school…On Barbies, Marie Antoinette, and Being Left Home Alone ¶ The guillotine was sitting on the kitchen table when I returned home from school that Spring day, left behind by my decade-older brother. It stood about 18" high, with a metal blade wedged between the wooden verticals — grooved for the blade’s easy descent. The top center of the blade had a hole drilled in it, a leather cord tied through, and the free end was looped around a nail hammered askew to keep the blade fixed until time for an…Anna HerringtonJun 3, 2014
The Punishing Theology of the Body
I am almost completely recovered from Pope Francis’ wonderful visit to the hemisphere and pay even more attention to his heartfelt…endearments on Twitter. I am also grateful for the oceans of intrigue coming out of the Vatican about the visit and the current Synod of the Family taking place in Rome. The conservative theologians at the Synod have already fired warning shots across the bow of progressives about traditional views of sex, marriage and priestly chastity that for all practical purposes are written in stone. ¶ I recall reading about the fuss some European bishops made about contraception during the Second…charles mccullaghOct 12, 2015
Re-Imagining Old Battles: A Sea Story
I attended college after four years in the Navy and remember my freshman English instructor assigning an evergreen topic for the class’s…I attended college after four years in the Navy and remember my freshman English instructor assigning an evergreen topic for the class’s first writing assignment: what I did last summer. Most of the class wrote about going to the Jersey shore or serving as a counselor at summer camp. I wrote about surviving a typhoon in the South China Sea. ¶ Looking back, the paper was full of superlatives and purple prose and probably wasn’t worth an A.charles mccullaghMay 14, 2014
Announcing Trent the Musical
Pope Francis hasn’t even arrived in New York City and I’m having dreams about some cardinal in a very red hat chasing me through Lower…Manhattan and hurling theological thunderbolts, thank you very much. That his words are framed in cartoon bubbles and seem to float harmlessly through the ether takes some of the sting out of this bombast. But as a student of Jungian psychology and an avid believer in synchronicity, the connection between two apparently unrelated events, I simple had to stand up and take notice. ¶ I was ready to begin this piece with both guns blazing when I read an account of a Stephen Colbert Daily Beast…charles mccullaghSep 10, 2015
I Do Remember
…for my father, who died way too young.…for my father, who died far too young. ¶ Something slid into my thoughts today. ¶ Something almost tangible. ¶ Glimmers… ¶ real? ¶ My small head on your chest, ¶ our two hearts beating ¶ …warm ¶ …safe. ¶ Could this be true? ¶ The smells are of leather ¶ and smoke. ¶ You are reading, ¶ I am at peace. ¶ You are not a photograph, ¶ you are not over there… ¶ The candle’s flicker ¶ creates child’s trance.Anna HerringtonApr 26, 2014