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Hagar & Ishmael (Genesis 16-17 & 21)

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We come now to a narrative that in some ways is the worst story in all of scripture. The reason it is so bad is because many trace the present-day conflict between Jews and Arabian peoples back to the story, the narrative of Abram, Sarai, Hagar, and Ishmael. A deadly feud that is always in danger of breaking out in full out war, like now - that many see this story as the start of it all certainly makes it a haunted story. It all begins in Genesis 16. The story basically goes like this: Abram and Sarai grow increasingly impatient that the child God promised them isn’t arriving. Sarai especially is having difficulty waiting. Without consulting God, Sarai hatches a plan. Have Abram marry one of their enslaved. Hagar is chosen. Hagar and Abram consummate their union and indeed a child is conceived, a boy who will be named Ishmael. But as the story goes in Genesis 16, the pregnant Hagar makes her lack of fondness for Sarai increasingly known. Sarai responds in kind and worse. A feud begin...
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Jesus as Bodhisattva

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There is the centuries-old legend that between the age of 12 and 33, which in the gospels are not mentioned, Jesus traveled to India and learned about Buddhism. These lost years were spent studying and practicing the Buddhist dharma. Jesus internalized the dharma on the basis of his cultural-religious background, and came back to Palestine and taught a kind of Buddhist-Judaism. There is no historical evidence for this. Yet there are groups of Indians and Tibetans who hold to it. And it is pretty interesting for us to consider. That the story continues to make the rounds with many people believing it to be true itself says a lot. Many of us would like to believe it! One thing is for sure, what Christ taught was often very buddhistic. Jesus’ teaching, whether knowingly or not, tapped into buddhistic notions of righteous self-emptying and righteous effort amid suffering, the exaltation of the poor and the vulnerable, and the focus on the imminence of truth and the practice of compassion...
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"Wholy Holy" (Marvin Gaye): A Meditation

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Columbia Memorial Hospital faced the Catskills in the distance and stood just a half mile from the first living room I remember. The apartment possessed only two bedrooms, already too small for my father, mother, two older sisters, and newborn me. In a couple years, when my dad got a better job, we’d move. If child-bearing wasn’t what it was (and remains), I imagine my mom might have walked me home that week. But childbirth, rightly called labor, exhausts thoroughly. And with three kids all under five years of age and with a husband often working, parenthood never stopped exhausting my mother. April 10 th  of 1971 brought unseasonably wintry weather, a pointed, probing wind across the river and our city of the same name. And the alley off of Worth Avenue in downtown Hudson, New York included a steep hill up. My mom didn’t walk me home.   1971, historically speaking, isn’t notorious or notable for things like military or terrorist attacks, political assassinations, or the e...
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