Collie's Bestiary

Paper originally written for a fascinating The Bible as History & Literature class, circa the late 1990's. In the time of the Diaspora, the Jews must have suffered a great crisis of faith. In fairly rapid succession, they got to see their lands overrun by foreign barbarians, their property confiscated, their families enslaved or sent [...]

5. Homosexuals are destroying the institution of marriage The social ritual of marriage in the United States today is highly unstable, as the 50+ % divorce rate shows. I don't think it's fair to blame that instability on late-comers to the institution of marriage. That's like seeing a tire is getting low on your car, [...]

Originally posted August 2004 Credits: Thanks go to Lou, Bob, George, & Ian, for input and answers to difficult questions My May Firestarter, Why not Same-sex Marriage? prompted some wonderfully fascinating discussion. I've been told by a friend this is the hardest he's ever thought about issues like this. He thanked me for encouraging that, [...]

I'm in a master's program for Women's Spirituality at ITP (www.itp.edu) in Palo Alto. A lot of fascinating questions are coming up for me as I take the courses, and I'll try to put them up here on line for discussion as they occur to me. A particularly poignant question which hit me this weekend [...]

Naylor's image of 'Man' is symbolized by all her developed male characters. Invariably, they are the doers and accomplishers in the story — and they always destroy what is around them. Thus for Mattie we have her father, the leader of the family, who also beats his daughter (almost to death, when she won't tell [...]

Book authored by Gloria Naylor. Book review originally written in 1996 for an English Writing & Composition class Initially, Gloria Naylor's book The Women of Brewster Place seems to be stories of various women struggling under the inequities of poverty and racism. However, due to her use of symbology, thoughtful study can reveal a deeper [...]

Blackness & whiteness White people seemed almost incidental to the story, like mythological spirits or forces of nature, like the hurricane which ends up being the beginning of the end of Tea Cake. They pass through, they are fickle and unstoppable, thoughtlessly damaging, carelessly abusive… and then they're gone, and the mere mortals must pick [...]

Women & men I think this is why there are so few whites in Their Eyes Were Watching God, in fact. The real issue isn't white abuse of blacks, at least for Janie. Raised with white children, such that she didn't even realize initially she was black, and living in an all-black town as she [...]

Originally posted December 2005 Credits: for my book club, who once again chose something fascinating I wouldn't ordinarily have picked up. Synopsis This is the story of Janie, a black beautiful woman in the 1930's. Told in flashback to a close female friend, she relates her childhood and three marriages. In doing so she also [...]

The inadequacy of institutionalized religious responses to the jarring reality of real life issues is part of Spong's self-questioning. He finds hope as well as pain, however, in his search, expressing the excitement of thoughtful study and discussion with like-minded others in an effort to find a Christianity of integrity, love, and equality. It's clear [...]