Religion

 I recall reading an article about reading résumés and doing interviews. Because my grandchildren are immersed in job searches, it caught my attention. Perhaps I could find suggestions to offer them, easing their way through the process and empowering them to enhance their presentations to result in ultimate success. “When the final interview looms large, everyone is, or seems to be, equally qualified” I read. I paid close attention to the two questions the author (whose name escapes me) always asked the final candidates.

 Whenever I read the Matthean infancy narrative I feel the anguish of two good people who were flying in the face of the law and customs of their people. Here was an unwed mother trying to tell her fiancé that she is pregnant — but not with his child — and is, as well, still a virgin. Three facts, one more astoundingly incredible than the other, were his to swallow.

James Finley’s statement about great religion and pain asks us to recognize “suffering as suffering and transform our suffering into mindfulness, compassion, peace, and liberation.  … The teachings of the Buddha were not to escape from life, but to help us relate to ourselves and the world as thoroughly as possible.”