Ears to Hear
Three months ago I wrote about wanting to shut up. As it turns out, shutting up happened, and only now am I starting, maybe, to figure out why. It was never intentional. Since my Black [...]
Why I’ve Hit the Pause Button on Dialogue
Not so long ago, most of my writing was devoted to dialogue. Dialogue and Donald Trump. Dialogue and the debate over guns. Dialogue and why my website isn’t called Dialogue Venture anymore. A whole book [...]
Do Contemplatives Make Lousy Bloggers?
Three weeks gone and I’m already in trouble. Last month I attended a series of webinars on social media for spiritual writers. Sponsored by Writing for Your Life, the series was a pleasant surprise: it [...]
Care Like a Citizen, Think Like a Journalist (Part 1)
Political lies used to imply that there was a truth…. Evidence, consistency and scholarship had political power. Today a growing number of politicians and pundits simply no longer care. They are content with what Stephen [...]
Fox News, Paul Ryan, and Standing Knee-Deep in Campaign Verbiage
Sometimes, in this U.S. election season, you have a dig through a certain amount of misleading verbiage to get a better handle on the story. This came to mind last week when a startling tidbit [...]
The Glorious Internet: Closer to Dialogue or Further Away?
Remember all those long-ago TV ads that trumpeted the vast promise of the Internet to bring us all together? Apparently, quite the opposite is taking place. So says a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed by [...]
Facebook, Dialogue, and the Big Idea
Is Facebook good for working out ideas in dialogue or conversation? I’m thinking yes and no. Yes: Facebook’s immediacy—the “have a thought/express a thought” dynamic—is great for setting the crowd mind loose on a half-formed [...]