You’ve read the preface. Now here’s the introduction. ALTHOUGH A SELF-DEFROCKED SACREANT, Prosatio Silban retained a sensitivity to the more spiritual aspects of his daily routine — but since his was the life of a traveling cook in a buopoth-drawn…
Author: Neal Ross Attinson
Neal Ross Attinson is one of those compulsive writers who feels naked without a keyboard, or at least a a pad and pencil. He lives with companion and cat and library in Sonoma, California.
365 Names: “Teacher”
TEACHER The active metaphor here is that G?d has set lessons all around us, and it’s our job to discover them; imagine everything in the Universe labeled with a great big “LEARN HERE” sticker. No one of us really knows…
Day of At-Onement
IT’S HARD TO DESCRIBE THE feeling I get around 1 or 2 p.m. on Yom Kippur afternoon with no food since the previous evening. It’s an intellectual, buzzy sort of consciousness: colors are brighter, outlines sharper, and an almost euphoric…
Words to Bring Back: “Probity”
– Definition: n. Virtue or integrity tested and confirmed. – Used in a sentence: If our elected officials had more probity, there would be less Congressional probing. – Why: Actually, I’m not sure whether it’s the word or the concept…
Happy 5780!
THE WORLD MAY NOT HAVE begun 5.780 years ago — in fact, it didn’t — but since we’ve likely had writing for about that long, we might say that today’s traditional Jewish date may well mark written history’s 5,780th birthday.…
Fiction: Act of Who?
“THANK YOU FOR CALLING TOTAL Auto, may I help you?” “Yes, my car was swept away in the recent floods, and I would like to file a claim.” “I’m sorry sir, but flood coverage isn’t included in any of our…
If church worked, you’d only need to go once.”
— Pastor Rich Gantenbein, a”h
Why I Hate Jay Michaelson
IT’S THAT ANYTHING I CAN do, he can do better. It’s his unaffected, artless prose. It’s his vast non-dualist scholarship and experience. It’s his light touch. It’s his unpretentiousness. It’s that he neither talks down to or over the heads…
Prosatio Silban and the Light Breakfast
TO THOSE WITH LITERALIST SENSIBILITIES, the phrase “ridiculously beautiful” may suggest mere hyperbole and labored contrivance. But take dawn by the western bank of an iridescent river – black sands washed by rippling indigo sparked with silver and rose –…
5 Thoughts: Informed Appreciation
1. IT’S ONE THING TO LIKE something. It’s something quite else to know why you like it — and how it came to be. 2. “Informed appreciation” is the key to that knowing. Only when you can comprehend the effort,…
365 Names: “Shekhina”
THE SHEKHINA, or “Presence (of G?d),” comes from the Hebrew root meaning “to dwell” (it’s the same root as “mishkan,” the portable desert G?d-tent AKA “Tabernacle”). There’s a seamless distinction between the Presence of G?d and G?d Itself. Tradition teaches…
Words to Bring Back: “Pink”
– Definition (per SubGenius usage): adj. Happily and/or militantly vapid and mediocre; commercially soulless n. One who or that which exhibits these traits. – Used in a sentence: adj. “I’m surprised to see the otherwise excellently talented Tom Hanks in…