Showing results by author "Peter Menkin" in All Categories

They dance. They sing. They speak in tongues and shout - so the Reverend Bobby Perkins elicits. Dauntless, a stand-up Christian, Reverend Bobby Perkins preaches in the subways of Washington, D.C. where he has a heart for the drug addicts. His church members preach on the streets and speak to the lowly; real conversation goes on in this documentary. These are real people, and you may not have met them before.

This interview with Marie Howe, American poet and teacher, is the first of a series of three different interviews with American poets. Note some poems by Marie from her new book The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, are included in the Addendum to the interview - by permission of the poet, and of W.W. Norton publisher. Marie writes poetry of religious and spiritual kind, and other works most lovely and engaged in what one critic called the metaphysical.

I want to encourage the nation as a whole decide through a political process that one man and one woman is best for society. To see the political process working in society and not see the judicial side by fiat put such marriage on us. The standard of the bible specifies marriage between one man and one woman. In this unique hour and a half interview with The Reverend Doctor Wayne Grudem by telephone from the writer's home north of San Francisco with the Reverand at his Phoenix area home.

An historic, original copy of The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre, also known as The Bay Psalm Book, first published in 1640, is for sale, with an asking price $31 million dollars. The sale will fund the future ministry and life of the Old South Boston Church. The book is described as "the first fruit of the American press". The first book printed in British North America, it was also the first book entirely written in the Colonies. Of the first printing of 1,700 copies only eleven copies are known to have survived.

Pieter Bruegel’s epic masterpiece The Way To Calvary depicts the story of Christ’s Passion set in Flanders under brutal Spanish occupation in the year 1564, the very year Bruegel created his painting. From among the more than five hundred figures that fill Bruegel’s remarkable canvas, The Mill & The Cross focuses on a dozen characters whose life stories unfold and intertwine in a panoramic landscape populated by villagers and red-caped horsemen.

Spirit Rock is not a New Age Center, per se. Located in San Francisco's Bay Area (Marin County's Woodacre), Spirit Rock is home to Buddhists. They are not Zen Buddhists, as they emphasized. They are Theravada, as is one of their founding members the teacher and popular writer Jack Kornfield.

Where it is located, Marin County, many find Spirit Rock a refreshing and spiritual place to visit and take for a retreat. Marin County, and in specific Southern Marin, is not a place for Christian worship.

For my way of thinking, the work of a poet is the result of a gift. This is especially true of a poet who writes poetry of faith. Robert H. Siegel of Maine, USA, is a man with a gift. He is also a man who writes poetry that reflects his faith while writing about God's creatures, animals and such, in a lovely way that a naturalist can love. So I believe.

An interview with filmmaker Melissa Howden about her grandfather, US Army Chaplain "Ted" Howden. Chaplain Howden is considered a holy man by many. He was an Episcopal Priest who died in WW II in a POW camp.

Seasons of Faith: Religious and Spiritual Poetry captures listeners' senses and give them a reflective experience - allowing them to boost their spirit and inspire them to live a meaningful life. Spiritually inspiring, filled with insights, and life altering, Seasons of Faith: Religious and Spiritual Poetry is engaging poetry that everyone will surely enjoy.

That's what the cats that lived in the house said about her. They also said that she was one of the homeliest creatures they'd ever set sights on and in their conversations about. Tilde, whom they liked to talk about since she was new. They never once questioned where she came from or where she might be going.

In another of the ongoing series with Anglican and Christian poets this religion writer chose to interview Jewish poet and translator Peter Cole. One of his agents suggested a Jewish poet, though Ofer Ziv of Blue Flower Arts knew the series was made up of Christians and Anglicans. The mystic, poet, and secular Jewish married man of letters who is a scholar is reticent to use the word God in an interview, and even reticent to admit to a belief in the Almighty. Yet this religious and spiritual scholar and poet has a recent book of translations of works from the Kabbalah in the book titled The Poetry of Kabbalah: Mystical Verse from the Jewish Tradition.

It is almost trite to say Christians enjoy a good sermon. But those who go to worship at Duke University Chapel have the pleasure and good fortune of having strong preachers with a Christian message. The new Dean of the Chapel is in this line of quality preachers, and his administrative skills are not only sound, but up to the task as the months that have passed from his entry in 2012 to this 2013 demonstrate. This Religion Writer has heard of no complaint.

Here is the interview done with American poet Luci Shaw, of Washington State in the Northwest. This is another in a series of interviews with Anglican and American poets. (Luci Shaw is an Anglican - attends Episcopal Church in her Washington State.) She decided to respond to questions by writing answers, and this interview reflects her request so to email her answers. She did so and the answers were received October 1, 2011. At 83 years old, with 30 books to her credit, she's finished another work, that she hopes to see published, about what it means to get to be older in years.

In this article-interview that covers the property dispute between the Episcopal Church and Christ Church, Savannah regarding the breakaway Christ Church leaving that Communion and joining the Anglican Church in North America. This writer had the privilege of talking with a number of key people. Included in this group of people with whom the writer spoke was The Reverend Jim Elliott, an attorney who is Chancellor of the Diocese of Georgia (Episcopal Church).

An old Ford with simple carburetor called a farm vehicle from 1965, the all steel monster filling the end of the driveway against the sidewalk and white picket fence is adorned with gods, figures, wicked and mean creatures of plaster and perhaps sculpted elves. Mixed among the flowers by the walk, and towards the west where the mountains stand before the ocean begins is a line-up of gods like headstones for memory of previous tenants in this rooming house among the redwood trees.

Before Nelee Langmuir's death in Summer, 2010, her daughter wrote of her mother's experience as a Hidden Child. She wrote of it 2005, September 3 and Debra Wanner in so doing added her voice as a new generation to her mother's story. Here she serves as an introduction to the condensed narrative that follows of Nelee's oral history that tells of her remembrance of that time in her childhood, and that of her sister's, when through the help of good people in France, she and her sister escaped from the German Nazi occupiers.

This work was originally a set of transcription notes from a talk given by Father Michael Fish, monk, New Camaldole of Big Sur, at Incarnation Monastery, Berkeley. Father Michael spoke of his life in contemplative prayer as a Benedictine living in Big Sur at Immaculate Heart Hermitage. In an effort to catch the poetic sensibility of his long talk of more than an hour, held in the urban monastery chapel, I distilled the notes from the talk I attended as a poem.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco recently offered and continues to offer a unique show that explores (in audio alone) a question with a question: "Are We There Yet?" In an effort to find out about this uniquely special, creative museum, which is known in San Francisco but not even as far away as Los Angeles, let alone the rest of the world, this writer asked a Jewish law legal expert what is meant by asking a question with a question.

Read a number of shorter, interesting pieces including one on Rowan Williams and meeting the Pope with Benedictine Camaldolese monks, and a short essay on Elvis Presley singing Gospels. Read also about Lewis Lapham, and even a book review on Christ's last words - all by Peter Menkin.

A listener interested in St. Benedict’s Rule will find this 600 plus page work, published by The Liturgical Press a scholarly work. It can be used as a reference for reading, as in study, or as a reference work (so I think). The book speaks of St. Benedict’s sense of moderation, and his humility, an earmark of the book about the Rule itself, and a hallmark of the author who is a monk and priest.