Religion Is The Call To

If Rumi Is The Most-read Poet In America Today, Coleman Barks Is In Good Part Responsible. His Ear For The Truly Divine Madness In Rumi’s Poetry Is Really Remarkable.

Imagine A Man Besottedly In Love: He Won't Waste Time Speculating Whether Other Women Equally Merit His Affection.

Historically, Religion Has Given People Another World To Live In, A World More Adaptive To The Human Spirit. As A Student Of World Religions, I See Religion As The Winnower Of The Wisdom Of The Human Race. Of Course, Not Everything About These Religions Is Wise. Their Social Patterns, For Example - Master-slave, Caste, And Gender Relations - Have Been Adopted From The Mores Of Their Time. But In Their View Of The Nature Of Reality, There Is Nothing In Either Modernity Or Postmodernity That Rivals Them.

Every Society And Religion Has Rules, For Both Have Moral Laws. And The Essence Of Morality Consists, As In Art, Of Drawing The Line Somewhere.

Exclusively Oral Cultures Are Unencumbered By Dead Knowledge, Dead Facts. Libraries, On The Other Hand, Are Full Of Them.