Author Archives: hessd

I would like for you to stand with me on the sidelines of this conflict and try to determine what it is about. Let’s pursue the implicit football metaphor a little. As is true in many contested rulings, it is … Continue reading →

I have a thought about being possessed by demons. The thought I want to pursue isn’t all that scary, but it wouldn’t hurt to start with the only joke I know about demon possession. Question: What happens when you fall … Continue reading →

Why is that? What, exactly, have I done to “deserve” a break today? The thing I like best about etymology is not that it tells us what a word “really means.” [1] It is that it tells us how it … Continue reading →

I have not heard anything good about “black and white thinking” for a long time. In fact, I haven’t heard anything good about discrimination of any kind for a long time. The discrimination problem is easier to understand. It is … Continue reading →

This is about the achievement of two women, Ayo and Mead. They live in the village of Woodedge on one of the islands with which Ursula LeGuin has populated her world, EarthSea. Let me describe the achievement first, then I … Continue reading →

For many years, we read Auden’s “For the Time Being” at or near the date of Epiphany. Then that practice fell, as did many others, into the COVID 19 hole. This year, Bette and I climbed out of that hole … Continue reading →

I’ve been reading a good deal about “self-care” recently. I have read so much, in fact, that I am beginning to think about it. If you wanted to glance over a series of images about self care and you put … Continue reading →

The whole notion of “living in an illusion” and then of being “disillusioned” is a commonplace. Even if from the outside, it can be seen as swapping one plausibility structure for another, from the inside, it doesn’t feel like that. … Continue reading →

I took the argument far enough in Part I to say that one might declare an earlier view to be “illusory” for any number of reasons. What you took to be the factual underpinnings may have eroded. They almost certainly … Continue reading →

Everyone who was raised within a culture that believed something important about human life runs the risk of coming to a time in their life where they proclaim that they are “disillusioned.” I was raised in a conservative Christian culture, … Continue reading →