St. Valentines Day
February 14 is a unique day in American culture – one day a year, we are urged to love someone else besides ourselves (and to buy a card to declare our unmistakable intentions!)
Mark Bromberg is a writer, editor, and publisher in Athens, Georgia. He selected material for and edited the poetry collection "Interbeing" [Eugene C. Bianchi, Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2021] and published the Athens Word of Mouth poetry anthology [Bellemede Books, 2015]. His work has appeared online and in print in New York, San Francisco, London, and elsewhere.
February 14 is a unique day in American culture – one day a year, we are urged to love someone else besides ourselves (and to buy a card to declare our unmistakable intentions!)
In The Christian Century magazine (1974) I argued that American football, this great national sport which claims the devotion of a significant percentage of our population, mirrors in a ritual way some of the worst characteristics of our culture.
My book Interbeing contains a section of poems to my younger brother, George, who died in 2019, and now that I myself am in my tenth decade these poems take on a special resonance.
On the whole, our family interactions would never qualify for a Dr. Phil manual of the successful unit. Even the experts haven’t figured out the intricacies of this interplay. Yet out of this textbook case of wrong moves came two reasonably healthy sons, each carrying his own wounds from childhood in different ways.
Honesty demands that in the realm of doctrine, Christianity does not lend itself easily to becoming a nature spirituality. Ecology has hardly penetrated the shell of modern Christianity. The new challenge calls us far beyond recycling, or a few prayers for the earth at Mass, or turning the church garden into a bird sanctuary.