Tag: religion

on war, religion, and faith

I am not a religious person. What I believe doesn’t fit into neat little boxes, or for that matter, a church pew. I am, however, a student of religion because religion shapes our world. Notice I say religion, not faith. The two can be mutually exclusive. Religion seeks to subjugate, control. Faith is freedom, or

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what matters is now

For a long time, in my teens and early twenties, I was sure that we would see the end of the world in my lifetime. Part of me clung to science fiction in what I only now recognize as hope that I was wrong, or some unacknowledged notion that even if Armageddon was to happen,

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cognitive dissonance

As someone who was at one time an Evangelical Christian, my relationship with Easter is, at best, problematic. At one time in my life, I considered this to be the most sacred of holy days. Today, it represents all that I came to despise about Christianity. Unlike Christmas, which I can sink into as a

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#vote

Tomorrow is the big day. Election day. We’ve seen record breaking turn outs to early voting and absentee/mail in voting, but that is no reason to get complacent. It is our duty, as American citizens, and in a time like ours not one of us can take that duty lightly. This election cycle is more

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yule logs and pumpkins and the fear of 13

It’s Friday the 13th, which honestly is a day I love, and not only because I was born on one.  I’ll be honest, most superstitions strike me as odd, but they tell us a lot about who we are, or who we came from.  The roots of such superstitions can be illuminating, and they illustrate

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Beltane blessings

Today is the first day of May.  May Day.  Beltane.  It is a holy day of promise for the future, a day of planting seeds for the harvest to come. This is a day that celebrates spring, when the youngest flowers bloom and the air is filled with the light fragrance that whispers of the

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happy spring?

It’s another rainy, rainy day here in San Francisco.  Just walking from BART to the office has my legs soaked from the knees down. Don’t get me wrong, I love the rain, and gods know we needed it, but after a solid month of the stuff, I find myself craving the sun.  My cats are

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the elusive nature of unconditional love

Back in the day when I was an evangelical Christian (yes, really), I  spoke a lot about unconditional love.  I believed that I acted inside that love.  I believed that I understood what unconditional love really was. The truth is, I was clueless. It took a lot of changes in my life to realize that. 

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kindness matters

The guiding principle that I follow is simple: Kindness Matters. From the tiny gestures like holding the elevator for someone, or a smile in passing to the bigger gestures like buying coffee or lunch for someone to the grandiose gestures, like paying off someone’s debt or buying someone a car…it all matters. I try to

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the last stand

I haven’t really talked enough about Where Shadows Fall. I struggled a bit with getting this book done, maybe in part because I knew it would be the end of my living in that world, at least for a while. The grand finale takes place in Washington D.C., which I think was rather inevitable, given

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