Side Effects

Seems like more evidence against any omnipotent intelligent designer that neither the electrochemical interaction that permitted the bacterial beginning of life on Earth nor natural selection that pruned it— into eyes, hooves, feet, and brains—gave any thought to all the accidental side effects that would occur— like ecstatic joy, pain, love, power, and depression— and as a consequence, we are left on our own to deal with each of these radical, new expressions on Earth as best we can, drawing … Read on…

Billy Graham’s Better Half

Faith is personal, if nothing else—for some a font of life, for others a wound that never closes, but bleeds mystery, fear and grief, and aches within them long after leaving. And some leave but then heal, grow stronger, and return with a power of mind to face down the fear, to glean it and find gold. This was Charles Bradley Templeton. Who remembers him? We know Billy Graham, of course, who has the grudging respect even of many who … Read on…

Dear Lovely Death

Dear lovely death That taketh all things under wing- Never to kill- Only to change Into some other thing This suffering flesh, To make it either more or less, Yet not again the same- Dear lovely death, Change is thy other name. -Langston Hughes I have been coping with dying for as long as I can remember. I am not terminally ill, I am not sick; I’ve had no psychic vision of my own demise. I have struggled with fear … Read on…

One Cheer for Faith

The change winds* are blowing, are blowing – do you feel them? They are bringing to us a new zeitgeist. Suddenly, atheism is almost mainstream.  Look: Militant atheist authors on best-seller lists and talk shows: Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins. Atheist comedians on major network media: Julia Sweeney, George Carlin. Popular atheist TV characters: Lisa Simpson, Dr. Perry Cox on Scrubs. Even atheist politicians: the late California Assemblyman B.T. Collins, Rep. Pete Stark. And now, amazingly, atheist comic book … Read on…

The Hole of the Fox

Mo didn’t think that it was a foxhole, really, but  more of a shallow depression left when a recent mortar misfire had landed in the soft, moist, often-tilled black earth of this poor farmer’s field. The ground itself was dismally flat, even this close to the river, as was most of the land in this country. But the hole itself was very difficult to see, surrounded as it was by the withered tall stubble of common wheat that littered the … Read on…