Five Things I’m Grateful For

I never play well with these viral Facebook things, but when my daughter tags me and when it’s about gratitude, well, I simply must relent. It comes at a fertile time too,

Six Things I Learned While Hiking Waterfalls

Dark Hollow Falls

Having just returned to Virginia from Phoenix, and perhaps because I was missing the Pacific ocean this summer, I found myself pining for water. With nothing pressing on my schedule I decided to spend the weekend hiking some of the waterfall trails in the Shenandoah National Park.  

I Am Your Father, IV – Our House

This has been a good old house.  My family moved in when I was 14 and my father still lives here.  Every once in a while he talks about downsizing and moving to a smaller, more manageable place.  He never will. 

I Am Your Father, III – Your Attention, Please.

I often feel that apparently unrelated events in my life seem to converge around certain points in time around specific themes.  I don’t think there’s anything supernatural about that. I think we

God, Cigarettes and Sadness

I felt like I had lost my best friend.  Some of my friends had told me they had felt the same way when they went through it.  It didn’t stop me though.  I knew what I had to do and there comes a point where enough is enough.

Love, Not Religion, Is the Big Umbrella

The Pope made quite a stir last week when he said that even atheists are redeemed and can meet Catholics on the bridge of good works and love. To a former Catholic like me 

Science, Religion, And Knowing What Is True

We’ve heard them all.  Science is a religion.  It takes more faith to believe in science (or the big bang, or evolution, or an old earth, or climate change, or…) than it does to believe in God.  Today brought another set of comparisons of science to religion and religion to science in a Facebook discussion but from a different angle.

Love = Love

North Carolina is proposing an amendment to their state constitution, Amendment One, which would add this new section to Article 14 of the North Carolina Constitution:

Spiritual But Not Religious

Those who have ever made use of an online dating website know that part of signing up involves filling out a questionnaire that often includes stating one’s religious preferences.  Besides the usual denominational and sectarian choices there is probably also an option for “Spiritual But Not Religious.”

Ric Alba – Homosexuality, The Church and Christian Music

It’s been a busy week at the intersection of religion and our bedrooms – a very busy week. The Culture Wars are back it seems.  Washington State lawmakers passed a bill allowing same sex marriage.  Earlier in the week the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California’s Proposition 8 which bans same sex marriage was unconstitutional, upholding a lower court’s ruling, and almost guaranteeing a trip to the Supreme Court. Rick Santorum, has made a platform of social conservatism and believes that the health of our economy and the very future of our country is threatened by the decline of marriage but rabidly opposes gay marriage and contraception. He won all three of the Missouri, Colorado and Minnesota caucuses.