Jan/Feb 2018

e c l e c t i c a
s a l o n

Salon


(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole piece!)

As Our Worlds Turn: Fake News, Real Life & Other Fables

Religions are stories par excellence, maybe the first ones we created as a species and certainly among the most enduring. Whatever the later dogma and theology, all creeds rely on basic myths. Even after belief in those myths becomes attenuated or they are seen as metaphorical, the rituals that commemorate them remain because the whole structure falls apart without divine foundation. Without that foundation there's less reason to accept the religion's moral or any other authority it claims.

Thomas J. Hubschman

 

Fiery Angels and Hungry Ghosts

I had never even imagined such pain or loss. Her hair was wild in the wind from the flames, and her chipped nails slashed at her face like the wings of panicked doves. Her howl pierced the ear. She raised her eyes and looked at me from across the street and caught my eye—and it did something to me.

Stanley Jenkins