Of the many letters Caroline wrote to her lifelong friend Luise, one of the most intense (the 57th Letter) dates from seven years after the 4th Letter discussed in my last post. By then both were married; only a few months earlier Caroline had given birth to her first child (Auguste); though Luise already had children, Caroline knew that one of them was terminally ill. In the first paragraph Caroline describes how difficult Auguste’s birth was for her; in the second she consoles Luise over the impending death of her child. She thus subtly parallels birth with death and hence the labor for one with mourning over the other.
Fifteen years later, only a few months after the death of Auguste–the last of her four children to die–Caroline’s generally positive disposition evidenced in the 4th Letter and her experience in grappling with birth and death evidenced in the 57th Letter were being put to the test. Though she was holding up well, Friedrich Schelling (Friedrich), the man who was to be her third husband, seems to have been suicidal from feeling guilty (rightly or wrongly) for having failed to do enough to cure whatever illness killed Auguste. Caroline wrote frequently and urgently to him, offering advice and comfort. In one of those letters (274d) she characterizes the challenge of overcoming grief as a formula to be solved: “(death/pain) x (love/bliss) = (life/peace).” She terms this one of her ‘primal axioms’ (the “Ursatz”), although she seems playfully to concede to Friedrich that he or perhaps someone else shares responsibility for it. Continue reading “Caroline Schelling on Birth & Death by Stuart Dean”
Recently, a friend of mine sent me a journal article entitled, 
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
Western Easter has come and gone, and I missed it this year, by design. I went to Athens for the weekend, where Easter this year won’t come until May 1. In the Greek Orthodox Church, Easter is reckoned differently, so that sometimes (like next year) Easter falls on the same date in both faiths and sometimes (like now) the celebrations are several weeks apart.
I often feel the ecological crises the world is currently faced with are too big and expansive for me to really do anything about. How can one person make a difference? Where can I turn when feelings of ecological despair, overwhelm, anger and frustration at how unjust the world is arise? How can I align my core values with a world that dictates and forces me to actively participate in a materialistic and capitalist way of life that I am opposed too?
Imagine that you live in a society where people like the bloggers and readers of FAR — activists, academic, writers, and others who speak up for human rights — are persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. You have finally escaped with nothing but your life to the US, only to be thrown again into prison or end up sleeping on the street homeless. Behind the endless tirades in the media and around dinner tables about America’s system of vetting and settling, or rejecting, refugees and asylum seekers, are real women and men who had the courage, wisdom and commitment to stand up for human rights as protestors, lawyers, health educators or journalists only to find themselves treated as criminals or unworthy of having basic needs met here also.
(Spoiler alert: She’s already here)
Diane Padilla
The creation of cinema brought a new medium to which art and representation were transmitted. This new visual tool allowed people to bring to life favorite stories. Deemed in 1947 as ‘the greatest story ever told,’ the four Gospels found in the New Testament, have been ripe for cinema. Over fifty movies have been made which depict the life story of Jesus. Some have found lasting popularity and influence. Franco Zeffifrelli’s Jesus of Nazareth became the template for successful Jesus films. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was another turning point for Jesus cinema. Each new Jesus film becomes a window to study how the story is reimagined. 
Feminism and Religion 