What should we do with knowledge that undermines a force for good? I attended the Cyrus Cylinder symposium at D.C.'s Freer Sackler Gallery, the artifact's first stop on a U.S. tour. It was a sunny Saturday morning, yet the hall was packed, and no one was snoozing. Rightly...

Finally, I've revamped my website's "Bio," even the "Q&A," to reflect some big ol' life changes. Shoshin, the Japanese Zen call it. "Beginner's mind" -- to be sought and cultivated. It's all of everything a person ought seek, according to wise men from the east. And everything is in it....

It's not worth listing why I can't complain. I can't (complain, or make lists, for that matter). Yet, while everyone else seems to be embracing the new year with the energy of clear purpose and PowerPoint-able goals, I'm having drinks with Lord Languor and Princess Peevish. I know it's time...

As far as religious paradox goes, the radical vulnerability of God has got to take the cake (or the stollen, the bunuelos, the figgy pudding, the buche de noel, the truchas de navidad).

As I've lost my grip on all the other Christmas traditions still dear...

Where is God that we may give thanks?

Thanksgiving is the most American of holidays and not only because it's specific to our nation. It's also the one that everybody, no matter what else they believe, can get on board with. We even, for a brief moment, acknowledge the...

Water. Out of the great rivers long ago, mermen of a kind -- the Seven Sages -- emerged. It was they, ancient Mesopotamians told, who brought the gifts of civilization to humankind. But water was also the amniotic soup of chaos. Only after a god-hero split the sea monster Tiamat...

Marc Chagall was in his 90s when he created a series of stained glass windows, which decades later still draw thousands of visitors each month to the top of a hill in Mainz, Germany. They grace a cathedral, of all things, and that built originally to serve the Holy Roman...

I feel bad for the psalms, that collection in the Bible called psalmoi, "songs." Their music, the tunes supposed to accompany them, has been lost to us. Melodies such as "The Lilies," "Doe of the Morning" and "Do Not Destroy," denoted in the introduction of individual psalms, are mysteries to...

There is a long-standing tradition that no person, no mere mortal, should presume to possess the name of God. The Name, as the reasoning goes, is a holy thing, a handle on the divine not to be trifled with. We hear concern about its misuse in the ancient biblical commandment,...

To be "at the mercy of" is a strange expression when applied to the animals who live with us. Yet that's what came to mind when my dog of over a decade died. "We can be sure of death; it's the living that's uncertain," my husband said to me. His...

Imagine Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton raising a glass with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his political opponent Mir-Hossein Mousavi in mutual celebration, without anyone losing face. Unlikely? Not so fast.

There is one day each year when it could happen, when a civil conversation between our countries, and even the...

This essay might, alternatively, be called "On Not Reading the Bible." But then I must hastily add: I'm not against reading the Bible. Not exactly, anyway. Thing is, the Bible doesn't lend itself to reading straight through for understanding in the ways that modern books do. It is a wildly...

"Did you know," a bright-eyed young woman breathlessly exclaimed to me, "that when King James wrote the Bible, he didn't actually put everything in?!" I was riding the D.C. metro a few weeks ago when she sat down beside me with this information. Since people don't normally talk on the...

The Bible is a peculiar book, and it's hard to get straight information about it. If you're one of those people with a nagging feeling that you should know more about the Bible than you do -- or even if you can recite chapter and verse (but don't know that...

I remember when King Tut was all the rage -- the impressive displays of luxury items from Tut's tomb, the mummy itself, the song "Walk Like an Egyptian." Well, he's back in the news, in a most 21st-century way. This time, archaeologists, with their cool cool stuff and...

The cover girl for last week's Time magazine is not pretty, by conventional standards. She's a bit jowly, for one thing, and whiskers sprout from her cheeks and chin. The deep brown eyes that gaze into the camera are frankly a bit off-kilter, and she cops some attitude: "Way to...

I'm tempted to put an exclamation point at the end of that title statement, but that would be wrong. You see, in northern Minnesota where I grew up, people use this expression all the time, but they do not inflect it with passion or zeal. Rather, it's delivered, like any...

On March 28, Christians celebrated Palm Sunday, the day when Jesus rode into Jerusalem to great "Hosanna!" acclaim. But exactly how did he do it? The stories disagree in a puzzling way ... unless you know something about the conventions of biblical Hebrew and that the New Testament...

Recently, atheist students at a Texas university offered porn in exchange for Bibles arguing, "same diff." Inflammatory, to be sure, but are they right? The Bible is indeed full of racy material, from its very first book on. Robert Crumb's Genesis in graphic novel form warns...