Showing results by author "Peter Menkin" in All Categories

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.

The Reverend Doctor Herbert F. Brokering, pastor, author, lyricist, speaker, and hymn writer of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), died Nov. 7 of congestive heart failure at his apartment in Bloomington, Minn., according to his son, Mark. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America news service says in its report, "Brokering, 83, was a member of St. Stephen Lutheran Church, Bloomington."

Another in the series of ongoing interviews with American poets. This interview with University of Delaware Professor Jeanne Walker is part of the special subset in this series called American Anglican poets. This writer talked by phone in June, 2011 with Jeanne from his home office north of San Francisco to Jeanne, who was in that morning time at her home in the Philadelphia, PA area. We spoke for an hour, and the poet was forthcoming about her work as a poet, and as a University Professor of English .

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.

A collection of voices in interview from American Jewish Community regarding the real concern by them of bullying Jewish students on some University campuses plays a significant role in unmasking anti-Israel actions and behavior as anti-Semitism. That is the Jewish Community thesis and argument brought to legal remedy through Federal Law that is the theme of this series.

An American journalist named Ben Harris, who works for Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), is traveling the world in search of stories about Jews in their various communities. This lively interview with Harris, the "Wandering Jew", about his travels and traveling, was done mostly by email, with two conversations via webcam on Skype. When this writer spoke to Harris off the record for background, he was in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency offices in New York City, but the reported interview via email comes mostly while he was abroad.

Peter Menkin of The Church of England Newspaper conducted significant interviews with three Rabbis on the topic of religious education. These interviews are unique due to the new success of Internet education and its use in Jewish learning and the teaching of the Torah, as well as Orthodox Jewish adult education.

Senior Minister, Reverend Matt Broadbent of Los Altos, California Foothill Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, spoke with this writer by phone and webcam via Skype in February, 2010 about same sex marriage and same sex blessings. This is the first of a series of interviews with different clergy denomination members on the subject. Two other upcoming interviews are with The Rt. Reverend Marc Andrus of The Episcopal Church, USA (San Francisco Bay Area known as Diocese of California), and Rabbi Stephen Pearce of Reform Temple El Emanuel, San Francisco.

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.

In this interview with Shari Karney, Esq., the attorney and commentator discusses her opinions on the subject of child molesting, specifically referencing the recent Sandusky trial.

There is increasing American national attention on the often secret subject of child molesting and child molesters. Attorney Shari Karney of Santa Monica, California, has been working on these kinds of cases with others in the United States and especially California - almost as a crusade, as revealed in this interview.

In a conversation spanning half hour segments numbering seven on the same number of separate days this religion writer talked with the Reverend Doctor Lawrence Michael Cameron, OAC. The subject: Mental Illness. That is the Reverend Doctor's business and has been for 25 years as a pastoral counselor. We talked by phone to his home in Indiana from mine in Mill Valley, California. An advocate for the mentally ill, Doctor C, as he is affectionately known, bent his comments to let the listener know of his favorable sense of hope for mentally ill people and their treatment.

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.

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.

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.

Pamela Cranston is an engaging and interesting woman, who as a poet has grown so much in these past years - that one well-known Western United States poet told me. Her sense of the Almighty, tastes in Biblical writing as literature and her thoughts on religious ideal, and some of her views of the 21st Century Church are touched on in this interview given by her over the phone June, 2011 from San Francisco's East Bay to the writer's home north of San Francisco.

When a writer dies, one favored and admired, even loved by devoted readers, there is a sigh of mourning as though one's friend has passed away. Sometimes death marks a new era, even the changing of the guard to a new generation. In the religious sense, churchgoers are known for passing their lessons, faith, and joy from generation to generation - in Jesus Christ.

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.