On a side trip last year while camping my way to the west coast, I found myself casting up dust along a tooth-jarring washboard road across Nebraska’s badlands. After twenty miles I arrived at a gravel parking lot, from which a dirt path led down to a Monet-like pond. Glassy water mirrored sky, cattails, willow, […]
Little Celebrations #8: Liturgical Quotables
We arrive here out of many walks of life. We wear clothing of different patterns and our feet go in boots or shoes or sandals. Some read magazines, others read novels, still others read technical works or works of history. But gathered in community our hearts beat together, we laugh together, our tears are of […]
Little Celebrations #7: Liturgical Quotables
We are conceived in mystery to walk a narrow path: doubt on the one side, wonder on the other, faith which sustains and reason which guides. In gathering as a religion, we support one another, challenge one another, learn from one another, help one another remember what is too easy to forget. * * * […]
A Reflection on Wounded Knee
This December 29th will mark the 125th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre. As students of American history probably already know, this 1890 horror was, in a real way, the end of the so-called “Indian Wars.” That is, it marked the final crushing blow specifically against the Lakota on the Great Plains, but symbolically against […]
Transcendence for Atheists
Let’s begin with a neurological reality: we humans are limited in what we can experience. The finite human nervous system can only absorb about 10% of the information around us. The other 90% goes unprocessed: unseen, unheard, untasted, untouched, unfelt–unimagined. Mind you, that’s only talking about what lies within earshot and vision. It’s not even […]