Darwin Took Steps

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(Click on the thumbnail for a larger version.) . Glendon named this Darwin Took Steps. Size: 8″x11″, Oil on canvas paper. Assigning a number to any amount of steps would be arbitrary, but I chose 5 for a reason. Four for the support of evolution by natural selection (Darwin drew upon examples of 1. biogeography, 2. morphology, 3. embryology, and 4. palaeontology), and the fifth step for natural selection itself, or the elevation of reason over dogma, as the viewer … Read on…

Darwin Day Poster and Handout

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You have to love the people that put together Darwin Day. Click on the thumbnail at the left for a bigger version. You’ll love it! There is more humor and meaning packed into that simple poster than you will find in most full books! This is from a handout prepared by the Darwin Day Committee. Click here to see the entire handout.

Last Night’s Dream

Never happened. No loaves of bread ….turned into floating men ….or mountains of stone. No lights blinked on ….and off, turned into roses ….and bloomed off center. The cat didn’t tell me ….the secrets of life ….and her claws ….didn’t shine in the dark. If I never went to sleep ….I couldn’t wake up ….to your song or his song ….or any damn song ….at all, so stop ….singing.

Pushing the Envelope

I ride the spine of Point Reyes peninsula – north – to Lighthouse Point. Craggy cliffs spill to the sea – waterfalls of creeds hardened to the core. Peppered here and there with clumps of greenery, summer wheaten grass spreads across the hillsides giving hint of winter rains to come. A herd of elk pose across the crest, their pointed antlers spaced and lined like fence posts in a row – elders – watching from above their bugle call – … Read on…

Can Can God Create an Object He Cannot Lift?

(Omnipotence Paradox) Go ask the Big Guy, the one eternally preoccupied– knees bent, arms flexed beyond the galaxies. Sweating since the Big Bang, which he categorically rejects. Still cursing the stone, (misbegotten egg!) and pondering in His Omniscience, which came first: this Goddamn stone I cannot lift, or the chicken head who brought it to existence?

Swimming Lessons

Heat surrounds me in heavy humid drifts in the dressing room at the Albany pool. Overhead pipes drip on naked torsos. My inner arms expand – embrace each face: Chinese, Japanese, Caucasian matrons, Blacks, bleached from inter-marriage, aspiring school kids – eager to learn. Baring our bodies, an olio of faiths orbits in laps toward the other side. Deep or shallow – open for torahs, arks, crosses, chadros, little Hoti Buddhas. The life guard stands ready, paroles the Olympic expanse, … Read on…

The Power of Now

“Michigan educators have stifled plans to teach a breathing exercise as part of a health course, bowing to opponents who worried that deep breathing could promote devil worship or mysticism. Other stress management techniques will be substituted, said Don Ben Sweeney of the Michigan Model for Comprehensive Health Education. “People look at it and say it’s ridiculous. Other people will come and testify like mad that it creates out-of-body experiences and undermines Christianity,” he said.” –cited from a newspaper article … Read on…

Looking For God

I once thought I knew my way. I walked through churches where men wore white robes and gold embroidered stoles to cover emptiness. The smell of baptismal water led me to stepping stones that carried me across deep places in the stream promising peaceful pastures where cows munch grass and birds perch on their backs pecking bugs for breakfast. I wanted to find words that would lift me from a dark abyss where doubts gnawed daily at my brain. I … Read on…

Scream

Scream by Charlotte Carney

Scream, a painting by Charlotte Carney Click the graphic for a larger version. The Artists Description: The “Scream” was my reaction to the religiosity that is so pervasive in our lives. Through color and symbolism I tried to convey intense feelings of frustration and anger and to indicate the danger of the intent of the intruder. About the artist: Charlotte is a ‘secular humanist’ /Artist from the shores of New Jersey who finds great joy in her non religious lifestyle.

Who Sings in the Deepest Water of the Abandoned Lagoon?

-Title after Pablo Neruda- Fanciful creatures who inhale water, and exhale ballads through windpipes of coral and kelp, lungs of sandstone and shells, teeth of abalone, netted lips, knotted hairs in tangled locks. From Bottomland, one rose and sang to me, his voice a chorus all in one, of heavy doors that would not open, their hinges blazed in the fires of Hell. He sang of six-legged beasts with flipper arms that tossed him into treeless air, of taloned birds … Read on…