Quest Blog
Swimming in the Christian Waters (or: Beware, You May be a Humanist)
2013-10-03 Let’s say you find yourself living in, oh, let’s say the United States. It’s a country where something on the order of seventy-five percent of the population claims to be Christian. Let’s say you don’t believe in any other religion, either: you aren’t Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Baha’i, or any other of the myriad…
Read MoreAmerica…Where Do We Begin?
2013-10-04 I can’t sleep. Again. Tonight I’m thinking about how, in the city where I live, the police shot and killed a 34-year-old unarmed woman today, with her 1-year-old in the back seat of her 2-door sedan. I’m thinking about how I’ve driven those very streets, gotten stuck in tourist traffic on those avenues, turned…
Read MoreTogether
2013-10-05 Beloveds, I believe that we are all in this together – and together, we can shift a culture that is dehumanizing us all – A culture that prioritizes paper with imaginary value over oxygen, clean water, livable communities, A culture that tells some of us we are better than others, tells some of us we…
Read MoreThe ABCs of Extortion
2013-10-10 A. Thucydides–that Greek telling his story, human doings with nary a nod to the gods–said the powerful extort what they can; the weak pay what they must. True enough to make a bon mot. The powerful take, the weak give. Person to person; city to state; and the empires…
Read MoreA Garden Prayer
2013-10-19 That shrimp plant so determined to be seen poking through the ginger and the fig like a four year old waving skinny arms and red cheeks to those towering above That shrimp plant grown from cuttings of a friend who no longer lives in this country from a house that has since burned down That…
Read MoreReflections on death from the garden
2013-10-15 This time of year, as we approach Halloween, The Day of the Dead, and All Saints’ Day, I am often thinking of death. Granted, I am always a little bit morbid—my astrologer sister would say it’s because I’m a Scorpio. (I regret that I was too old to go Goth in my teen years,…
Read MoreHere an Ist, There an Ist, Everywhere an Ist-Ist
2013-10-17 The other day I got a subscription offer from a magazine called Free Inquiry, a publication of the Council for Secular Humanism. I’d been thinking about ordering the magazine. Well, here was my chance: a “special introductory offer for blasphemers only.” Got to love the marketing department. That’s no magazine for me. Though I…
Read MoreAnd Now, Introducing…Food
2013-09-07 This post could also be titled “What Will Our Daughter Learn From Us About Eating, Part 1/xx?” Already, we are in constant negotiations about eating. The current challenge is sitting down. We’d like her to “sit down, please” while she eats so she doesn’t teeter and fall painfully out of her high chair. But…
Read MoreSeason of Forgiveness
2013-09-08 Reflecting on his experience as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, the International Military Tribunal established at the end of WWII, Bernard Meltzer wrote, “When you forgive, you in no way change the past – but you sure do change the future.” The spiritual practice of atonement, asking and offering forgiveness, is a practice…
Read MoreWho’s In and Who’s Out of Institutions (and the immigrants between)
2013-09-12 The British social anthropologist Mary Douglas had this to say about institutions: Inside a religious body you get sects and hierarchies, inside an information network you get bazaars and cathedrals, it is the same, call them what you like. They survive by pointing the finger of blame at each other. That about sums it…
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