Robert Hutchinson: Author and Essayist
Veteran travel writer, author and award-winning essayist Robert Hutchinson enjoys exploring how ideas intersect with real life. His latest book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible (Regnery, $19.95), grew out of his world travels where he came into first-hand experience with, and developed great respect for, the world’s great religions. His first paid article, he adds, written for an alternative newspaper in the late 1970s, was about the children of the Hare Krishnas. Hutchinson, 51, went on to write numerous articles about such diverse religious groups as Tibetan Buddhists, Zen, Zoroastrianism, Bahais, the Sikhs, Orthodox Jews, and the myriad ...
The Eternal City
I took my whole family to Rome this year for Easter... and, as usual, it was an invigorating, life-affirming, faith-building experience for everyone. Rome has a way of doing that to people. I’ve been to many of the great cities of the world – from New York, London and Paris to Berlin, Athens, Cairo and Jerusalem – and none has the mystical quality to it as Rome does. My wife agrees. Paris is beautiful... Berlin is majestic... but Rome is truly magical. Perhaps it’s the warm, spring weather, the bright blue sky that lights up ...
The Nature of Existence
For a beach philosophizer like myself, it doesn't get much better than "The Nature of Existence," the quirky little documentary on the Meaning of Life that is opening this weekend in Los Angeles and Irvine, California. Filmmaker Roger Nygard wrote down the 85 toughest questions he could think of about the meaning of life -- and then set out with a camera crew to ask them of such luminaries as Indian holy man Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (The Art of Living), professional atheist polemicist Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), 24th generation Chinese Taoist Master Zhang Chengda, Stanford physicist Leonard ...
Working at the Beach
It's true: There is a strange tribe of people, myself included, who can and sometimes even do work at the beach. It's mostly writers, true, but freelance professionals of many stripes can make it work. It helps to have a good smart phone... a sand-resistant laptop with a bright screen... and access to a flat space to set up shop. One of the beaches near my house has these great concrete picnic tables and a small burger cafe nearby that keeps me supplied with french fries and coffee. Bloomberg BusinessWeek just ran an article about people like ...
My First Decade of Aikido
My knees are a bloody mess. It’s been a while since I did suwari-waza, the strange practice in traditional Aikido dojos of doing techniques, samurai-style, on your knees. Last week, the sensei spent almost the entire class doing suwari-waza and, when I stood up, the skin on my knees was entirely rubbed off. Ouch! And yet here it is, the following week, and I am showing up again. I took up Aikido ten years ago, at the ripe old age of forty, and have been struggling to learn it ever since. The kids wanted to take a martial ...
Why Blogging is the Perfect Business
There aren't too many businesses you can run while sitting at the beach... but a successful blogging-based business is one of them! Of course, what people don't tell you is that before you can sit on the sand and update your blog from anywhere in the world... you probably spent 60 hours a week in a windowless room getting your blog to do the things you want it to. But the truth is, blogging is an entirely Internet-based business. That means that it is geographically independent. You can run your blogging business from anywhere in the world that has wireless Internet ...
Thriving Long-Term Marriages
The break-up of Al and Tipper Gore's 40-year marriage is sparking a soul-searching among many long-time married couples. The Wall Street Journal today had an interesting article about the shifting marriage patterns among couples who have been married 30, 40 years or more. It turns out the Gores are typical of the baby boom generation: Whatever the Gores' issues—he's 62, she's 61—they are part of a new normal that began with their generation, according to Census statistics. Of the 8.1 million women who were married between 1970 and 1974, just over half made it to their 30th ...
The Earthy Mysticism of William McNamara
In the late 1970s, while studying philosophy in college, I discovered the “earthy mysticism” of William McNamara. For more than 30 years, it has remained the dominant spiritual influence of my life and is partly the reason I remain, despite everything, a committed follower of Christ and a stubborn (if not very pious) Catholic. A charismatic retreat master and former Carmelite friar, McNamara espouses a gritty, life-affirming, no-nonsense approach to Christian spirituality that is unique and, to me, exhilarating. Despite having encountered over the years a wide assortment of gurus and spiritual teachers from many different religious traditions, ...
Sex and John Paul II’s Theology of the Body
According to rabbinic tradition, the first commandment God gives Adam and Eve in the Garden is to have sex: Pru vehravu, "be fruitful and multiply." It's little wonder, then, that Christian theology has pondered for centuries the place that human sexuality and bodily existence have in God's plan for the universe. On the one hand, anyone familiar with the Jewish testament knows that sexual attraction (and sexual sin) permeate virtually every book. What's more, two centuries of crusading secularism has exaggerated Christian pruddery in the early centuries of Christianity and in the Middle Ages. On the other hand, it's also true that the ...
Yoga is Good for the Soul
Like many Christians who practice yoga occasionally, or would like to more often, I am hardly a purist. You could even call me a “cafeteria yogi.” I pick and choose among the various yoga practices that fit my overall lifestyle, level of fitness and religious beliefs. Fortunately, at every single yoga school where I have studied, without exception, the other students are exactly the same. They are typical Canadian and American suburban professional types: harried moms, latte-swilling office workers, students, retired folk. The music is funky New Age chanting music, which, quite frankly, I find very relaxing and enjoy immensely (just ...
Jesus in Ancient China
It's an amazing story, one only now being told. More than 1,300 years ago, a Persian Christian monk named Aleben traveled 3,000 miles along the ancient caravan route known as the Silk Road all the way to China, carrying precious copies of the New Testament writings (probably in Syriac). Aleben and his fellow Christian monks stopped in the Chinese city of Chang-au (Xian), where, under the protection of the Tang Dynasty Emperor Taizong, he founded a CHristian monastery and began the arduous task of translating the Christian texts into Chinese. It was the year A.D. 635. ...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and a Return to Eden
I just finished reading Leo Damrosch's magisterial 2005 biography of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius) and I've been thinking a lot about how Rousseau's vision ties in, or doesn't tie in, with the problems of modern urban society. (Full disclosure: My wife hates Rousseau because he forced his lifelong mistress, Therese Levasseur, to give up their five children to foundling homes and then had the temerity to instruct women on why they should breastfeed their children and raise them according to his precepts.) Rousseau, born in Switzerland in 1712, was basically a professional vagabond and loafer who ...
Freelancing Success
Working at the Beach
It’s true: There is a strange tribe of people, myself included, who can and...
The Eternal City
I took my whole family to Rome this year for Easter… and, as usual, it was...
Why Blogging is the Perfect Business
There aren’t too many businesses you can run while sitting at the beach…...
Robert Hutchinson: Author and Essayist
Veteran travel writer, author and award-winning essayist Robert Hutchinson enjoys...
Read More Posts From This CategorySpirituality & Religion
Michelangelo hid brain stem in God’s throat… or not.
You know the old expression, “To a hammer, all the world looks like a nail?” I...
Today’s Golden Age of Philosophy
Few people know this, but our age is an amazing time for people who love philosophy. When...
The Nature of Existence
For a beach philosophizer like myself, it doesn’t get much better than “The...
Elena Kagan and the Perils of Legal Positivism
It goes without saying that Supreme Court nominee (soon to be justice) Elena Kagan...
Cowboy Constitutionalism
Jacob Weisberg wrote a thoughtful piece on the various factions on the Right. It...
Read More Posts From This CategoryRants and Raves
Organization “Inside Google” Runs Ads About Google CEO’s Big Brother-Like Attitude
Most parents understand that the Internet is NOT their friend. Companies like Google are making billions by tracking everything you do online… and then selling that information to the highest bidder. Worse, they are tracking everything your children are doing as well… up to and including using the GPS in their cell phones to track their... [Read more of this review]
Why I Don’t Trust Doctors (or Most “Experts” for That Matter…)
In bioethics, politics and law, oftentimes we must rely upon the opinions of so-called “experts,” particularly those in the medical professions. But as anyone who has ever dealt with doctors knows, they are frequently wrong — but almost NEVER admit it. The problem is, their arrogance can get people killed or cause serious harm.... [Read more of this review]
Al Franken is a Big Fat Liberal… and other truths the media don’t tell you…
Well, it turns out Al Franken, the pudgy Saturday Night Live comedian and now U.S. senator from Minnesota, got elected the way most Democrats get elected: through voter fraud. If you’ll recall, the rabidly partisan Franken’s election in 2008 was so close the Democrats did a re-do of the 2000 election: They kept re-counting and re-counting... [Read more of this review]
Evolution, Creation and Adam & Eve, Part 1
The debate over Evolution, Creation and Adam and Eve is one of my least favorite topics. That’s because I’ve accepted the theory of evolution ever since fourth grade, when it was first explained to me in science class by a Dominican nun. As a result, debating evolution feels a lot like debating the Pythagorean theorem: It’s something... [Read more of this review]
Godblock: Those Open-Minded Atheists!
I had to laugh at this one: A browser plugin called GodBlock that blocks any reference to God or religious beliefs on the Internet. It’s like a porn filter in reverse. Here’s a quick description: GodBlock is a web filter that blocks religious content. It is targeted at parents and schools who wish to protect their kids from the often... [Read more of this review]
Benedict XVI’s Visit to Great Britain Will Bring Out the Lunatics
The Vatican announced today that Pope Benedict XVI will visit Great Britain on September 16-19. “Accepting the invitation of Her Majesty Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom, and of the bishops’ conferences of England and Wales, and of Scotland, His Holiness Benedict XVI will make an apostolic trip to the United Kingdom from 16 to... [Read more of this review]
NCR Blogger Rebuts Biased New York Times Attack on Pope
It’s not often you read someone in the National Catholic Reporter defending the pope. After all, with the exception of its excellent Vatican correspondent John Allen, Jr., the NCR is to Catholicism what The Nation is to the Republican Party: the official organ of opposition. For decades, it’s been the primary forum for angry ex-priests,... [Read more of this review]
Mel Gibson’s Latest Rant
Not that he needs my help, but I’ve long defended Mel Gibson from accusations that he’s a bigot. I thought a lot of the rage directed his way over his film, The Passion of the Christ, had less to do with any real or perceived anti-Semitism in the film than it did over its depiction of the Gospels as they are actually written. In other... [Read more of this review]
Frank Fenner: Another Crackpot Prediction of Doom
NOTE: The photo above is an illustration of what the earth would look like if ALL of the ice on earth melted and the worst fears of the climate change doomsayers came true: About 4% more of the earth’s surface would be covered by water than is true today. I would take the aged scientist Frank Fenner’s predictions of imminent doom more... [Read more of this review]
Meg Whitman Governor is Democrats’ Worst Nightmare
Meg Whitman Governor and Carly Fiorina are the Democrats’ worst nightmare. They are smart, accomplished, tough business women who got where they are, not by milking the political system and becoming professional parasites, but by actually working for a living. They also give the lie to the Democrats’ frequent claim that left-wingers... [Read more of this review]
Catholic Lesbian Blogger Eve Tushnet
The New York Times had an interesting article on the lesbian Catholic blogger Eve Tushnet. She’s not interesting because she’s lesbian and Catholic (lots of those) but because she is lesbian, Catholic and opposes same-sex marriage. Raised in a liberal household (her father a non-observant Jew, her mom a Unitarian), Tushnet went to Yale... [Read more of this review]
Catholic Church in Tibet
I’ve been fascinated by Tibet my entire life — ever since I read, as an 11-year-old, Alexandra David-Neel’s classic Magic and Mystery in Tibet (a book I still own and reread). As a child, I scooped up every book on Tibet I could find in my local public library: Lowell Thomas, Jr.’s Out of This World to Forbidden Tibet…... [Read more of this review]
BP Oil Spill Shows Need for Natural Gas Conversion
The British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico only underscores the need to develop the most plausible, practical, real world source of alternative fuel we have: natural gas. Anyone who spends as much time as I do on the beach is a natural environmentalist. I’ve been itching for years to get my hands on an all-electric car (like fellow... [Read more of this review]
Thriving Long-Term Marriages
The break-up of Al and Tipper Gore’s 40-year marriage is sparking a soul-searching among many long-time married couples. The Wall Street Journal today had an interesting article about the shifting marriage patterns among couples who have been married 30, 40 years or more. It turns out the Gores are typical of the baby boom generation: Whatever... [Read more of this review]
Three Cheers for Tax Havens!
I don’t usually comment on blog posts… but Ariana Huffington’s rant today against corporate “greed” and the use of tax havens gave me no choice. Ariana’s rant focused on how corporations and wealthy individuals take advantage of LEGAL provisions in the U.S. tax code to avoid paying unnecessary taxes. She writes: The... [Read more of this review]
Israel Doing What U.S. Would Do
Once again, the State of Israel is under fierce attack for merely defending itself. The decision May 31 to intercept the so-called “peace flotilla” on its way to Gaza may not have been wise, but the abuse heaped upon Israel for its actions would be almost comical if it were not so serious. Alas, too many conservatives… and way too... [Read more of this review]
Sister Margaret McBride and Abortion Politics
The events that led up to Sister Margaret McBride’s automatic excommunication by the Archbishop of Phoenix are undeniably tragic. But the sleazy and predictable way that the liberal commentariat has used this case to further their abortion-on-demand agenda — and take a few extra shots at the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis —... [Read more of this review]
Time Magazine Slams Pope Again (What a Surprise!)
Former Time Magazine staffer and now contributor Jeff Israely (aided by news editor Howard Chua-Eoan) takes a predictable cheap shot at Pope Benedict XVI in a cover story this week (June 7, 2010). The cover headline is actually: “Why Being Pope Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry.” (Golly, I wonder where they’re going with... [Read more of this review]
Debating Atheism, Part 1
A week ago, I was scrambling to get my daughters off to a major swim meet at six o’clock in the morning, when I got a strange email: I was being invited to come to the Philosopical Society at University College Cork, Ireland, and participate in a debate about “whether this house would” reject atheism. The debate would be in mid-March,... [Read more of this review]
New York Times Has Predicted Melting Polar Ice Cap for 128 Years
This is interesting. A blogger at The Daily Telegraph compiled a list of predictions of imminent doom due to the melting polar ice cap featured in The New York Times over the past, oh, 128 years… It’s really true: Liberals have been predicting the end of the world (unless we immediately do what they say) for more than a century! Again,... [Read more of this review]
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