• Religion

    Damn Right I’m Religious!

    March 29, 2013 - By 

    I used to hem and haw whenever people asked me whether I’m religious. Saying “yes” means certain things to certain people, as does saying “no,” so my answer tended to depend on what I could discern of my questioner’s understanding and assumptions of exactly what being “religious” means. Maybe I was making it just a tad too complicated, you say? Maybe so. In any case, my one-word answer to those who pop the religion question now is: “yes.” Often followed by: “I’m a devoutly religious non-theist.” Which usually begets an arched eyebrow and some variation of, “Say what?” O.K., some…

  • Odds & Ends - Poetry

    Millions of (Luscious, Sexy, Very, Very Red) Strawberries

    March 22, 2013 - By 

    Is there a sexier, more luscious and sensual fruit in all of God’s kingdom than the strawberry? The fig, maybe, but its rather drab exterior color lacks the verve and pizzazz and “Please have me, it’s spring and I want you to be happy and fulfilled” invitation of the so very, very red strawberry. Red is a power color, a “Here I am and do I feel alive!” statement to the cosmos and anyone within it who happens to be looking at you, and your dress or shirt, and that basket (or flat!) of strawberries you’re waltzing away with from…

  • General Nonfiction - Religion

    A Scientific Nincompoop’s Musings on the “God Particle”

    March 15, 2013 - By 

    So we have a new pope one day, and the next day, an updated and near certain confirmation of the Higgs boson, known in the popular press as the “God particle,” the tinier-than-tiny sub-atomic thingamajig that physicists have concluded gives matter its mass. (“What gives matter its mass?” perfectly exemplifies the kinds of questions a scientist would ask, no? The “social” science equivalent: “Why are people the way they are?” Physicists know better than to go anywhere near that question…) As a long-lapsed Catholic, who, like most exes, maintains a complicated relationship with the Mother Church, I have watched with…

  • General Nonfiction

    Rereading “Walden,” Forty Years Later, on My Kindle

    March 9, 2013 - By 

    “Simplify,” Henry David Thoreau tells us in Walden. I am reading this advice in the airport, awaiting a jet plane excursion, just moments after downloading a 464-page collection of his works onto my Kindle, delivered courtesy of the airport wi-fi via Amazon’s “Whispernet” technology in a matter of seconds. Currently, I have Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Arnold’s Culture and Belief, Homer’s The Odyssey, Aristotle’s Poetics, and the entire New Oxford American Dictionary packed onto my Kindle, too. And this mini-library has barely begun to crack the device’s capacity. I’m lugging these hundreds of thousands of digitized words onto a plane in…

  • Fiction - Odds & Ends

    On Compassion and the Imagination

    March 4, 2013 - By 

    “I can’t imagine how you feel.” “I can’t imagine what it’s like to…” —lose a child —get cancer —nurse your mother through dementia —be deserted by your spouse Actually, I can imagine it. I really can. I may not know how you feel but I can certainly imagine it. Imagining it is the only way I can muster the compassion, empathy and identification with your suffering that allows me to offer you comfort and solace in your time of trial. Imagination is not only at the root of all art and religion, but it also provides the foundation upon which…