Other animals, that is. Of course we humans are compulsive storytellers. We tell stories to entertain ourselves, to explain the world, to heal each other. Sometimes we call the storytelling ritual “therapy.” But because storytelling requires language, and because until … Read More…
Tag Archives: animism
Let’s get the negatives out of the way first. The movie pits good against evil in a tired old storyline that has less subtlety than a spaghetti western. The postcolonial spin on the tale is that here the indigenous people … Read More…
I haven’t been able to forget a comment David Abram made during his keynote at a conference I attended in the spring. He said even science, devoted as it is to studying the material world, in practice acts as if … Read More…
It’s a treat to return in August to Prescott, Arizona, with its annual din of cicadas. Today, as I approach the corridor of trees lining summer-dry Granite Creek, the chorus of insects in the treetops is boisterous. Eagerly I slip … Read More…
The conference ended a couple of days ago, and I’m off in a few minutes to catch a train for a day trip to an open-air museum in another part of Holland, but I want to catch up the conference … Read More…
I did something yesterday I’ve never done before: cut pages out of a book. No, this wasn’t censorship; this was rendering Rick Steves’s guide to Amsterdam more portable. I couldn’t believe my visceral reaction against taking a knife to a … Read More…
Am I really going? I still can hardly believe it. Exactly a year ago a friend from Saskatchewan and I started tossing out ideas for a panel for the next conference of the International Society for the Study of Religion, … Read More…