psychology dector

“…for here there is no place that does not see you.  You must change your life.” (from   "Archaic Torso of Apollo" by Rainer Maria Rilke )                                                                                               For a while now, I’ve wanted to explore some other views in addition to The Teacher’s View .  I’ve taken a lot of freedom on these pages to cover a wide swath of subjects.  Truth is, I have always been more student of life than teacher.  Maybe, back in 2007, I should have called this blog The Student’s View .  We are always learning. What’s done is done, and I enjoy the freedom I’ve had on these pages to explore wherever my mind has wandered.  I expect to keep going with The Teacher’s View well into the future. However, one area I want to explore with some depth and insight is Los Angeles , my hometown and the place I’ve lived all my life.  To that end, I’ve launched a second blog called On The Street Where I Live:  Searching For The Soul of Los A

My interest in religious iconography goes back to my childhood in Catholic school.   I marveled at the way Catholic crucifixes and statues were always more graphic than our Christian counterparts whose churches often had a plain, wooden cross over the altar.   Catholic churches were known for their often bloody representations of Jesus hanging by nails on the rough wood.   Saints, too, especially martyrs, were depicted with flaming hearts, barbs and wounds, clearly in torturous ecstasy in their pain.   I remember one statue I saw when I was in second grade:   St. Lucy , patron saint of the blind, holding a plate with two eyeballs, visually telling the story of how she either had her eyes gouged out by her tormentors, or dug them out herself as sources of sin. Recently, I attended a dedication of a statue of Our Lady of Fatima on a local corner in my neighborhood.   During the Mass, the priest tried to make the case that Catholic worship of icons was not idolatry, something forbidden b