My recent post on excerpts from the book, “The Best Things Ever Said About God,” reminded me, as I mulled subsequent comments and conversations about it over the past several days, of an exercise we did at the semi-annual retreat of my church’s Worship Associates a few months ago. Our minister gave us five minutes to consider this fill-in-the-blank sentence: “God is…”, and another five minutes to jot down our thoughts.

It was brief, it was largely off the top of our heads, and it was from a group of Unitarian Universalists, who have established a rather well-deserved reputation, it would seem, for their free-thinking conceptions of the divine. The result was a quite lovely and varied set of 15 brief reflections that seem worthy of sharing and pondering, particularly as a natural follow-up to the post earlier this week.

They were also anonymous, which I found added to my own ability to listen attent...

God: the literary and conversation topic that just won’t go away.

Even when we’re not talking about God, we are.

Trying to improve, are we? Find greater purpose, figure out our next step, start to give back, leave a legacy?

God, God, God, God, God.

Wherever go matters of ultimate concern, there goes Grappling With God.

Great fiction: all about God, explicitly or not. (Though often about her absence.)

In his introduction to “The Best Things Ever Said About God” (20000, Harper Collins), more or less agnostic attorney-turned-writer Ronald B. Schwartz calls his book:

 “…a miscellany for doubters and believers alike—though at neither extreme—and purged of freeze-dried sermonettes and vainglorious citations to chapter-and-verse proof that God prefers tea to coffee...

Seeing the movie adaptation  of “The Big Short” last night transported me back to a decade ago, when I made a regular habit of leaving my road bike in the garage and hopping instead on my upright city bike to cruise my hometown. Cycling is much like walking in giving you slices of life and peeks into windows and garages to take a measure of Americana. The slices just go by faster.

I can distinctly remember the internal commentary going on in my mind at the time as I moseyed in leisurely fashion through typical middle class neighborhoods of well-appointed tract homes, of the three-and-four-bedroom variety, with double garages on relatively small lots. They were workers’ homes, “owned”—at least until the banks stated reclaiming them—by plumbers and teachers and shop owners and radiology techs...

Every passing year sees the passing of more people from our lives. Whether from death, ruptured or merely faded relationship, or the loss of the person we once knew because dementia has robbed him or her of that cherished personhood, we come to the final days of a year and amid our looks back, as joyous as some of them might be, we are also reminded of loss.

As an additional reminder, news programs highlight the more prominent people who have died, displaying a list of names and faces as the year’s final credits roll.

Among those names this year, and prominent indeed on my list: Oliver Sacks.

Author of startlingly original works such as Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks was a neurologist, professor, writer, thinker, ruminator, and possessor of endless curiosity and a puckish humor...

In my earliest days as a journalist, words were the thing. If meddlesome editors and art directors wanted to attach photos to the small ink marks of the alphabet that I committed to paper, fine, that was their business, but frankly, I could not have cared less. Seas of gray were fine by me.

That was not the only matter I was young and dumb about back then. But I won’t spend any more words elaborating on that here—it’s time again for the Holiday Photo Gallery!

Lights! Cameras! So much beautiful, nuanced storytelling action, oh my!

Here’s just a brief baker’s dozen+1 sample from the World of Flickr and its legions of generous, talented photographers who have helped liven up this page over the past 52 weeks. Behold…

If red is a power color, you may as well start being powerful down at your feet…

Girl Power, Red Boots, by Rachel Sian

So much thunderous action down there in the world of the small…

Drop ...