Tag Archives: thoreau
Sacraments
I am serious about my religion. I don’t take its sacraments lightly. They may cause you discomfort: A long walk, a trusted companion, an open fire. I cannot imagine a relic, a book, or a doctrine more sacred. Perhaps you doubt them. Perhaps I doubt yours. A walk through a wood A walk through a [...]
Pink Floyd and Thoreau
I was just listening to the Pink Floyd song “Time” the other day, when three lines of the song struck me: You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way … You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today … Hanging on in quiet desperation is the [...]
Good, Evil, and Plutarch
Henry David Thoreau, an obscure 19th Century classicist and journalist who earned a reputation as a decent translator of Greek works, once reflected on the profound presence of Evil in the world: Are there not two powers? —Journal of Henry David Thoreau, Jan 9, 1853 Among the Greek classics which Thoreau is known to have [...]
Henry Thoreau’s Moral Universe
I’ve been a wilderness lover since the summer my brother David and I first rode our bicycles into the Sierra Nevada, but I never did think much of Henry David Thoreau, until I suddenly fell in love with him. To me, Thoreau was just some New England liberal garden-naturalist who might have liked to walk [...]
I Wanna Be Autonomy
Awe, come on! A little anarchy never hurt nobody! Be a devil! Give it a try, won’t you? Just this once. Anarchy in the NZ This here is your real scarlet letter. It stands for some pretty nasty ideas: anarchy, for starters. Likewise, we have atheism, the theological equivalent of anarchism. Then there’s that rarely-employed [...]