Wednesday, October 15, 2008

"Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you."
Gal 3:11 (Message translation)

Truth
by Leonard Nathan

As children in the schoolroom game
whisper from one end of the class to the other
and garble the message they pass on or change it
beyond recognition, so we
pass on the truth of our kind.

My father heard it from his, something
vaguely involving God, and his father
heard it from his, and so on back
to Abraham, and so father
passed it on to me, but God had dropped out.

And so my son heard it, a wisdom
found inside a Chinese fortune cookie:
"Be good and hope," which he will pass on
to his son, but maybe with good
missing or hope, maybe with love added.

Though love was never meant to mean so much.

"Truth" by Leonard Nathan from
The Potato Eaters. © Orchises Press, 1999.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

George Farah, the executive director of something called Open Debates (http://www.opendebates.org/), complains in the Denver Post about the Presidential Debates.

Here’s the comment I posted on his op-ed column:

Here's an idea: Instead of a debate, televise a Socrates Cafe discussion comprised of the nominees for President and Vice-President, and eight other people chosen at random and then approved by both sides, the way juries are formed.

What's a Socrates Cafe? Join us any Thursday evening for the Denver Socrates Cafe, 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Trinity Church, 18th & Broadway here in Denver. More information and RSVP at http://socratescafe.meetup.com/82.


What do you think? Would a Socrates Cafe shed more light than heat, unlike the current debates or the variations on the current system George suggests?

How about this: A weekly television series called Socrates Cafe. That's reality TV that I would watch.

In the meantime, I hope you will join us for our Denver Socrates Cafe, for more info on it and to RSVP, click on the link above.