Fairness - The Commentary

I had just finished my Master’s in Biblical Studies, and with an emphasis on Near Eastern archeology was on a summer tour working on archeological sites from Turkey to Lebanon to Egypt and from Jordon to Israel. I was so single-mindedly focused on the past then that my photos from that summer in 1969 were all about old, dead stuff, the “digs” and their relics, not the living people around me. I regret that I hadn’t taken a photo of six old men who gathered together every morning at an outdoor table at the coffeeshop on Manger Square in Bethlehem. Yep, that Bethlehem, as in “O Little Town of….” My week at a small guesthouse off the Square from day one included the daily pleasure of sitting with these elders who warmly accepted me into their morning ritual as “that young graduate student” who could benefit from their on-the-ground advice and mentoring. They were right, of course. And I’ve never forgotten it, though I've no idea what happened to them after they bid me well for the rem...

You haven’t really lived if you haven’t experienced a breakup with a romantic or potentially lifetime partner. That’s not to recommend that we should seek out opportunities to do so because we’re otherwise missing out on something exciting. It’s to say that breaking up is a standard part of the history of any human search for love and intimacy. There’s probably a breakup of lovers taking place somewhere in the world at any time of day or night, including right now while you read this. What that means, of course, is that no one is alone when they end a relationship and that no one is the first or sole person to have the feelings they do about it no matter how singled-out they feel at the time. It means that though it’s likely to feel awful, it’s not the end of the world or the end of one’s life.   Sympathy, even empathy, should be easy to come by because the experience is all around us. Only the hard of heart can walk away from a relationship without any emotions. It’s even produced...

Anger is a – maybe the - dominant emotion in our culture today. It's looked down upon if it seems “out of control,” but it's one of the few feelings that men can express without anyone questioning their manhood because of it. But both women and men, if they're paying attention, can be seething underneath. And that anger bursts out at times in over-reactions to practically anything from being cut off in traffic to responding with the most negative possible interpretation of what someone has just said. There are couples who actually stay together in anger . We sometimes notice them shopping together or bickering with each other. Neither partner looks happy. There are other couples where one or both of the partners simmers continuously below the surface. That makes all the little things the other member does annoying - even activities that in the beginning of the relationship seemed cute and adorable. Over the years women had been taught that they're not supposed to expre...