Mandates of Heaven

Religion hadn’t lost its capacity to bestow, again according to Breckman, “the consoling message of cosmic meaning and personal redemption,” to comfort countless numbers of its adherents afraid of death and acquainted with grief, to illuminate the masterpieces of Chartres Cathedral and the Mass in B Minor, to introduce Gerard Manley Hopkins to the power and glory of “chestnut-falls and finches’ wings,” to restore in Leo Tolstoy “the joy of being,” but it had been relieved of its character as a public menace.

Published: Dec 18, 2009
Length: 15 minutes (3,902 words)

The God in the Machine

President Barack Obama during his first months in office seldom has missed a chance to liken the country’s healthcare system to an unburied corpse, which, if left lying around in the sun by the 111th Congress, threatens to foul the sweet summer air of the American dream. The prognosis doesn’t admit of a second or third opinion. Whether on call to the Democratic left or the Republican right, the attending politicians and consulting economists concur in their assessment of the risk posed by the morbid emissions.

Published: Sep 1, 2009
Length: 11 minutes (2,919 words)