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Love and Other Squishy Words

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Google Image It’s common among many families today to express their love for one another verbally. They say “Love you” at the end of a telephone conversation and say similar things to each other when they are ending a visit. Many also use the phrase with their close friends. I think it’s great. When I grew up, youngest in a family of five, we all knew we loved each other and showed it in many ways, but we wouldn’t dare express it verbally. I think that was much the case in most families “back in the day.” It was culturally inappropriate. I hope today’s usage doesn’t become just another throw-away phrase, one of the many we use so regularly and unthinkingly that we forget or overlook its meaning. This kind of love, the kind we have for family and friends, can be classified as “agape,” borrowed from the ancient Greeks. But more on that later. Ambiguous Feelings Like money, age and other topics, I believe most of us have ambiguous feelings about the word “love.” We may “love” the wo...
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Superándonos a nosotros mismos

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Imagen de Google A mi edad, soy muy consciente de los estereotipos sobre las personas mayores. Mi nuevo amigo, ChatGPT, del cual todavía desconfío (¿una de las señales de los estereotipos de ancianos?), me ha ayudado a hacer una lista. Somos olvidadizos, confundidos por la tecnología, lentos, físicamente frágiles, dependientes, tercos, fuera de contacto, resistentes al cambio, gruñones, aburridos, conservadores y una carga para los demás. Estoy seguro de que me he dejado algunos. Supongo que muchos de nosotros cumplimos con estos estereotipos, pero muchos otros no, al menos no con todos. Por eso se llaman estereotipos, que mi diccionario en línea define como “un conjunto de generalizaciones simplistas sobre un grupo que permite a otros clasificarlos y tratarlos en consecuencia.” Cerca de la verdad Pero como la mayoría de los estereotipos, creo que muchos de ellos están cerca de la verdad. Muchos de nosotros tenemos la tentación de pensar que, a una edad avanzada, sabemos casi tod...
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Getting Over Ourselves

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Google Image At my advanced age, I’m well aware of the stereotypes about the elderly. My new friend, ChatGPT, of whom I’m still suspicious (One of the marks of an elderly stereotype?), has helped me list them. We are forgetful, confused by technology, slow, physically frail, dependent, stubborn, out-of-touch, resistant to change, grumpy, boring, conservative, and a burden on others. I’m sure we've left some out. I assume that many of us fulfill these stereotypes but many of us don’t, at least not all of them. That’s why they’re called stereotypes, which my online dictionary defines as “a set of simplistic generalizations about a group that allows others to categorize them and treat them accordingly.” Near the Mark? But like most stereotypes, I think many of them are near the mark. Many of us have the temptation to think that, at an advanced age, we know just about everything and everybody worth knowing. Many young people, of course, have the same temptation, even though they ...
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Faldas Negras y Sombreros Extraños

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Imagen de Google Crecí siendo católico en la “vieja iglesia”, es decir, antes del Concilio Vaticano de principios de los años 1960, cuando los obispos del mundo se reunieron en Roma para “voltear la iglesia de cabeza”, como lo describieron algunos observadores. Mis padres, mis cuatro hermanos y yo fuimos católicos practicantes toda nuestras vidas. Todos fuimos a escuelas primarias católicas y la mayoría fuimos a escuelas secundarias católicas, enseñadas por hombres y mujeres miembros de órdenes religiosas. Dos de nosotros fuimos al seminario y nos convertimos en sacerdotes. (Yo recibí una dispensa de la iglesia después de seis años y regresé al estado laico.) Las misas, incluida la música, eran en latín. El santuario que rodeaba el altar y la nave de la iglesia, donde la gente principalmente se arrodillaba, estaban separados por la reja de comunión. Tenías que ayunar antes de recibir la comunión y no comer carne los viernes. La mayoría de los católicos asistía a misa al menos una v...
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Black Skirts and Funny Hats

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Google Image I grew up Catholic in the “old church,” that is, before the Vatican Council of the early 1960s when the world’s bishops met in Rome to “turn the church upside down,” as some observers put it. My parents, four siblings and I were practicing Catholics all our lives. We all went to Catholic elementary schools (grades 1-8) and most went to Catholic high schools, taught by men and women members of religious orders. Two of us went to the seminary and became priests. (I received a dispensation from the church after six years and returned to the lay state.) Masses, including the music, were in Latin. The sanctuary surrounding the altar and the nave of the church, where the people mostly knelt, were separated by the communion rail. You had to fast before going to communion and ate no meat on Fridays. Most Catholics attended Mass at least once a week and observed many popular devotions. That was then. This is now. Happy Childhood I should add that mine was a happy childhood an...
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¿Puedes llegar a tener fe solo con pensar?

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Imagen de Google Charles Murray era un chico de un pequeño pueblo de Iowa. Hijo de un ejecutivo de la Corporación Maytag, eventualmente fue a la Universidad de Harvard, donde obtuvo una licenciatura en historia antes de conseguir un doctorado en ciencias políticas en el Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts (MIT).   Luego se convirtió en un comentarista frecuente sobre la vida estadounidense contemporánea, especialmente en lo que respecta a la educación, la política social y el sistema de bienestar, escribiendo artículos para publicaciones nacionales y siendo entrevistado a menudo sobre lo que escribía.   Me lo encontré en YouTube, donde lo estaban entrevistando sobre su nuevo libro, “Taking Religion Seriously.” El entrevistador parecía asombrado por el hecho de que Murray, un agnóstico declarado durante toda su vida – una persona que no afirma ni cree ni deja de creer en Dios – pudiera escribir un libro así. ¿Religión irrelevante? Murray, verás, siempre había seguido...
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Can You Think Your Way to Faith?

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Google Image Charles Murray was a small-town Iowa boy. Son of an executive in the Maytag Corporation, he eventually went to Harvard University where he received a bachelor’s degree in history before getting a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He went on to become a frequent commentator on contemporary American life, especially regarding education, social policy and the welfare system, writing articles for national publications and being frequently interviewed on what he wrote. I came across him on YouTube, where he was being interviewed about his new book, “Taking Religion Seriously.” The interviewer seemed astonished at the fact that Murray, a lifelong, outspoken agnostic – a person who claims neither belief nor unbelief in God – could write such a book. Religion Irrelevant? Murray, you see, had always adhered to the standard mantra of most atheists and agnostics, that religion is unnecessary and irrelevant. Now, in his new book, Murr...
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