How I Lost My Religion

I was raised as a Muslim. The truth is, despite my projected religiosity, I was never fully committed to Islam. Like many children, I did not understand the full importance of my religion or its rituals. I asked my parents, who did their best to explain it all to me. I memorized the standard explanations, but I didn’t feel it in my heart. I participated because my parents wanted me to. Read on…

The Meaning of Life

One sometimes encounters people who assert that, unless there is a
God, life has no meaning. Now, as soon as we ask what they mean by
God and by the meaning of life we enter a quagmire from which it is
impossible to get out. Read on…

Reflections on the Nature of Human Evolution

I remember once asking my late son William, “What is the purpose of life?” William, a schizophrenic, was babbling nonsense, but he stopped and in a moment of clarity gave me a quirky smile and replied: “The purpose of life is to relieve God’s boredom”. Read on…

Grace

It bothers the father more than the father can say, this sound of the teeth and tongue of the son chewing the food in the open mouth, this food that was the work of the mother sitting beside the father and beside the son, the mother between the father and the son, staring down at the food on her white plate, praying that the father does the work this time, the hard work of keeping his mouth shut about the … Read on…

Urn

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. . . Containing the Night Thoughts of a Sexagenarian It is this heavenly tale, that the child in one could wish for, that keeps me awake tonight, on the eve of my sixtieth year, fearing death and wishing for grace, not knowing what either is, or even if either is, though the unbreathing stillness of bodies has me fairly convinced of the former, and of the latter I have seen so little as to doubt what I have seen … Read on…

The Pyramidologists

We are the pattern-seers, the dream-chasers. We see castles in clouds and omens in our tea. Why not? Imagine a primitive human, mistaking a shrub for a leopard—he might detour to avoid it, be inconvenienced, and live to have children. But what of one mistaking a leopard for a shrub? He is food. So it was the pattern-seers who made the next generation and the next. The need for patterns and meaning sank into our bones, became a hunger, deep … Read on…

unbeliever’s prayer

Lord – thank you. Thank you for Everything. While it’s tempting to just thank you for love + beauty + discovery + joy, for food + family + purpose, in all fairness I feel that I should thank you for all of it; the light and the shadow, strength and weakness, mercy and cruelty – it’s a package deal, isn’t it? It wouldn’t seem entirely grateful to say “thank you for my life, but could you take away the difficult … Read on…

My Country Isn’t

My country isn’t my country because I’m not myself. I haven’t been myself since I don’t know when. My mother said just be yourself. My father was himself all his life and everyone loved him. But I loved the smell of the rain before the rain more than the rain itself. And I lived in the country of myself all my life. The food was bad. The language odd. The peace unsteady. So I moved to the country of I’m … Read on…