Showing results by author "Peter Menkin" in All Categories

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.

The second slim book of poems by Peter Menkin, a continuation of the first, this work was an early inspiration in the manuscript preparation for his other works.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 .

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.