Silence Michael Jinkins Erling Kagge has journeyed to the North Pole, the South Pole, and climbed Mount Everest: the first person in the world to do so. In addition to being an attorney, an art collector and a publisher, he has written six books on a variety of subjects including philosophy. But I would […]
Buses and Anxieties Michael Jinkins There are some old sayings about the ways in which misfortune visits us. Like late buses, problems tend to come in bunches, we have been told. Another version says that bad things come in threes, which is usually really unnerving if you’ve just been visited by two so far. […]
The Strawberry and the Cardinal Michael Jinkins One day this man walking along the road approaches a farmer tending his strawberry patch. He is enjoying a holiday, hiking from one country inn to another. Each day he sees sights he has never seen before and dines sumptuously each evening on the best foods […]
I Have Done Unspeakable Things Michael Jinkins The man stood before me. He was old, perhaps five feet tall, thin, sinewy and hard as a pine knot. “I have done unspeakable things,” he said, his eyes dark pools that no light known to this world could penetrate. The faces he saw at night […]
Usually when we give thanks, we give thanks for the more pleasant blessings we receive from life. But today I’d like for us to think about those blessings life brings us that come wrapped in pain instead of pleasure. A couple of decades ago I was sitting in a group therapy session in Dallas, […]
Sabbathing Michael Jinkins “There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be.” (Abraham Heschel) He ran the nicest supermarket in town. In a time when most grocery stores were still mom and pop affairs. The long wide aisles of his store, the gleaming glass freezer […]
Awake Michael Jinkins A couple of years ago, a publication from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) featured an article decrying the teaching of Mindfulness in public schools. Although Debbie and I support the work of SPLC, I was very disappointed in the article because it completely grabbed the wrong end of the […]
Un-Domesticated Mysteries Michael Jinkins “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, […]
Thomas Hardy is remembered today mostly for his novels. In their narrative power and realism, they set the stage for the great novels of the twentieth century. The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Ubervilles, and Jude the Obscure, in my view, mark the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of a century […]
Sanity, …. Within Reason Michael Jinkins Given the popularity of “The Onion,” the satirical newspaper that makes up some very funny stories (and some very rude ones too), a bunch of rowdy young Christians started publishing an online spoof newspaper with some hilarious fictional stories. One headline I read went like this: “Mountain […]