From Agnostic Mom, Leaving the Church, Part 2:
Extreme Cognitive Dissonance.
I began my own effort to receive an answer from God that The Church was true. I didn’t realize at that time that it was too late. My paradigm had shifted. For the first time ever I had already peeked through Door #2, the door marked […]

From the NYT: World Leaders Release Plan for Resolving East/West Rift
Mr. Annan said in a written statement: “The problem is not the Koran or the Torah or the Bible. Indeed, I have often said that the problem is never the faith, it is the faithful and how they behave toward each other.”
Also from NYT: For […]

Quite a while ago, I discovered BeliefNet’s Belief-o-Matic — a tool for ostensibly figuring out which religion best aligns with your worldview. At the time, the answer for me was that I best fit Mainline to Liberal Protestantism. This fit me quite well, and even helped me to realize that there’s a whole […]

Spotted today: vanity license plate “SMPLIFY”
On a BMW X5. Whaaaa? Um, okay.
~~~~~
driving along a country-ish road in Arizona
Mike: Oh! That burns me up Did you see that church?
Me: No. What did it say?
Mike: “No Jesus. No Peace. Know Jesus. Know Peace.”
Me: (mildly confused) Right, and?
Mike: It’s an ultimatum, a threat. […]

First: News
Nope, not mine this time — I literally mean “the news.” Jim Wallis (Sojourners) and Tony Perkins (Family Research Council) will be on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric this evening to discus the “Moral Direction of our Country.” I’m recording it, and if there’s anything worth talking (or ranting) about, […]

courtesy Sojourners (via email):
“I love my church, and I’m a Catholic who was raised by intellectuals who were very devout. I was raised to believe that you could question the church and still be a Catholic. What is worthy of satire is the misuse of religion for destructive or political gains. That’s totally different from […]

Monday’s post followed along a path I’ve seen before, one where I’ve been convinced that there’s a specific “normal” path to follow, just to be reminded that it’s okay for me to be me.
A few years ago, I first started to actively reconnect with my own Sprituality, but bucked hard at the idea of Christianity, […]

God
Please watch over the patients in the hospital
and let them
live
another day,
even if they hoped that they would never awake from
Maria shares a prayer, and reminds me yet again why I can imagine becoming a psychologist, but not a psychiatrist.
Without even trying, she also expresses how I often feel about God: questioning, angry, but still looking […]

I (heart) 9 Chickweed Lane. From today’s strip:
Guilt is the tragic delusion of culpability without the comic relief of sin.
Face it, we all need a little comic relief.

At the Happy Feminist, worth reading: On Being Created in God’s Own Image
Beautiful. I need to remind myself of this often, in both my dealings with myself and with others.

First:
Via the Progressive Blogger Network, I found The Mindful Mission. I haven’t had time to delve into much of his writing just yet, but if his bio and reading list are a hint, I will soon add him to the daily reading list.
Next:
From Mindful Mission, I found this post. Wow…just, wow.
“christians” taught me…
to […]

From today’s NYTimes:
Disowning Conservative Politics, Evangelical Pastor Rattles Flock
A few tidbits:

Before the last presidential election, [Pastor Boyd] preached six sermons called “The Cross and the Sword” in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a “Christian nation” and stop glorifying […]

Since my last post, I’ve spent a little time browsing around some of the religion-oriented blogs I frequent, plus a few I don’t.
I (heart) this by NinjaNun (from comments on one of the StupidChurchPeople blogs):
One can be sincere, and still be sincerely stupid.
Preach it.

Rough paraphrase of something I told my counselor last week:
Growing up, I never had a concept of myself as an adult.
Seriously, I think my first major depression (at age 26) was largely brought on by a lack of vision for myself and my future. I’d grown up expecting to go to school, get good […]