Easter in Ordinary

Weekly, I post four articles that I found significant and a poem. Our lives are enriched by seeing better. Each week, one article comes from the world of photography, a discipline that is about seeing. Another article comes from the world of technology, hence seeing something of the future. Another article takes up an aspect of our life together, seeing more clearly the other. Another article refers to faith, seeing the unseen. Finally, the weekly post concludes with a poem, because poetry is about seeing words whose arrangement allows us to see anew. This week, I will forgo the article on photography as I would like to draw our eyes to something else. We have significant choices before us: a deal with Iran, a presidential election, what we will eat today, all with consequences, even if we are oblivious to them. I admit that I am constructing a "straw man" here amid newsmakers of our day, concluding with a familiar poem, while suggesting an unfamiliar interpretatio...

Over the last few days, I have made my way through E.J. Dionne, Jr.'s Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent . To begin with, the book posits that the United States is not an either/or, individualism or community, but a both/and. I have long enjoyed Dionne as a writer for Commonweal and the Washington Post and as commentator on MSNBC as well as someone I follow on twitter ( @EJDionne ). A Catholic, Dionne speaks gracefully about Catholic social teaching, a quality that particularly appeals to me. The book's premise, that we in the United States, have a divided political heart is attractive and rings true. Written in 2012, just ahead of the election, I panicked as I entered Chapter II which began by recounting revisionist history from Michele Bachman and Sarah Palin (53). I was not eager to revisit the ugly politics preceding the general election of 2012. I yearned for something deeper. Dionne delivers. E.J. Dionne, Jr., P...