I must be reading (at least some of) the right things. I’ve stumbled over citations of Mohandas K. Gandhi three times in the last half hour. Three of them, in “He Said/She Said” just down there to your right, come from a passionate, funny and often gloriously written book called God Laughs and Plays by the American novellist, rough-edged mystic, fly-fishing environmentalist and anti-fundamentalist Christian David James Duncan. (I’ll post a review of the book when my site allows me; troubles continue.)

The other Gandhi Trap was in the back of the wonderful Cosmo Doogood’s Urban Almanac 2005, which I picked up just now in a spasm of brainlessness. Beneath a set of “Weather Facts” — fastest tornado winds: 286 mph, Wichita Falls, Texas, April 2, 1958 — was this delicious food for thinking:

Gandhi’s Seven Deadly Sins

Wealth without Work.

Pleasure without Conscience.

Science without Humanity.

Knowledge without Character.

Politics without Principle.

Commerce without Morality.

Worship without Sacrifice.

(Wonderful, yes? I don’t know its source. It is widely cited, in Stephen Covey’s Principle-Centered Leadership, for example.)