religion | The Smart Set

Play it with Tremolo

Thomas Laver — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 11:30:00 +0000

“Whisper!” the priest commanded. In a second, the sound of my grade one classmate’s recitation plummeted from stentorian, to sotto voce, to smothered. He had just intoned the opening words of the Roman Catholic ritual of confession, “this is my first confession.” I was next in the confessional queue, but I couldn’t hear him mumble […]

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Bursting a Bubble

Scott Hurd — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 12:45:54 +0000

Thanks to the Shah of Iran, I attended elementary school at a small Christian academy in west Tennessee. Four decades later, that experience adds perspective to what I see going on today. Not in Iran. But in the US.  Months after I completed sixth grade, Iranian revolutionaries took hostages at the US Embassy in Tehran, […]

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The Allure of Medievalism

John Capista — Mon, 08 May 2023 11:30:00 +0000

On a recent three-week vacation to Italy where my wife Maria and I go each year to celebrate our Italian heritage, we spent our first week in Siena. Our only previous visit there had been three years earlier on a one-day tour to several Tuscan hill towns with a hired driver. The schedule called for […]

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Belonging

Usha Raj — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 11:30:00 +0000

One evening when I was seven, my mother showed me and my brothers a large neon sign on the side of a high-rise in the heart of the bustling city of Calcutta. Against the dark outline of the building, a huge ceiling fan whirred, its blades outlined in neon. As I watched, the projection faded, replaced by the outline of a table-top sewing machine with the wheel on one end turning around as […]

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Jottings During Covid

Balu George — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 12:30:00 +0000

The road is wet this evening and there are small puddles everywhere. That car slipping onto the main road from the side road with its indicator flashing, the sales girl holding up the bottom of her sari to prevent it from getting wet; that cigarette stub flying through the air to settle down in a […]

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Monday School

Vincent Czyz — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 14:50:07 +0000

Jimmy Carter, now a rheumy-eyed nonagenarian, has been teaching Sunday school for more than three decades at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, GA. Silver-haired and mellow-voiced, he smiles benevolently on worshipers, who are overwhelmingly adults. Speaking with his trademark southern lilt, Carter has the air of Jung’s Wise Old Man. A novelist […]

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Caught Dead in it

Stan Tymorek — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 13:30:54 +0000

Of all the doctrines and beliefs I had to learn about in Catholic grade school, there was no mention of the one religious question that haunts me as an adult: If there really is an afterlife, what do the dead wear? Are their outfits something you wouldn’t want to be caught dead in? Or are […]

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The Reluctant Believer

Mugdha Singh — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 13:37:25 +0000

“Mugdha Singh,” I said, when the nun at the head of the class asked my name. I was all of six years old and freshly out of kindergarten. I had followed some of my classmates and found myself in a catechism class. The nun, raising an eyebrow at the evidently non-Catholic-sounding name, asked me to […]

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Driving the Jinns Away

Rafiq Ebrahim — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 11:30:00 +0000

Whisked away from the comforts of Pearl Continental, I found myself in a small, but decent house in North Nazimabad belonging to Uncle Yusuf and Aunty Zulekha, my relatives, both in their early 80s. They had insisted that I must stay with them at least a couple of days before going back to Chicago. I […]

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Personable Jesus

Colin Fleming — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 11:30:57 +0000

One of the chief art-related themes of Easter has always seemed to have been, “This is Jesus, he was a super magical guy.” The day smacks of the reverential, no doubt in part because of the films playing on various TV stations that always seem to remain within the peripheries of our vision, as well as parading children in their early […]

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