The war in Israel and Gaza has taken a heavy toll on so many fronts. Foremost, of course, there is the staggering number of deaths of innocent people on both sides. And thousands of miles away, here at home, there are broken and strained friendships, communal rifts like the one a friend in another midwestern city reported. Her congregation is imploding over a sermon delivered by her rabbi who...
I loved living in our small New Hampshire town where the guy in the post office knew who you were as soon as you entered, and your plumber had a kid in your daughter’s class. Those small moments of connection cut through the feeling of anonymity from which we had fled in Brooklyn. But during our years in Chicago, we’ve learned that, given the right circumstances and the right location, you can...
Recently, Christina, a historian based in Jackson, Mississippi contacted me about a book project. She is writing about a program called Friends of the Children of Mississippi (FCM) which is an offshoot of the Child Development Group of Mississippi. CDGM, about which I’ve written in earlier postings, was one of the first of President Johnson’s anti-poverty programs in the 60’s, one of the largest...
My blog has a small readership, but they are as smart, thoughtful and empathetic as any group I know. They proved themselves once again in their responses to my recent posting on Spirituality. To jog your memory, it’s the one in which I bemoaned the fact that I felt like I wore cement boots that were keeping me from elevating, as it were, into another plane. I also mixed my metaphors by adding...
Note: Sections of this entry were written in 1969, a time when “Negro” was considered a respectful means of address for Black people. I’ve chosen to leave the word as is. Doing otherwise would be anachronistic. The center is way out in the country, many miles down a red dirt road over which the trees arch in a way that must make it invisible from the air. There is a clearing with a white wooden...