Ordinarily I don’t like to just leave a link to a news article without really expanding on it by adding my own thoughts, but I don’t have much time right now and I really wanted to put these out there:

1) Totally Gay Happy Meals/It is the end of the nutball Christian right. Here is your proof. To go

A sharply-written (and delightfully snarky) article about how the Religious Right has lost its power over America because the public has been bored with them for some time now.

2) McCain’s Problem: Not Age, but Condition

An article by Alec Baldwin for the Huffington Post with a very rational and appropriate warning not to alienate our elders by labeling John McCain as simply “old.”

Read and discuss. I’ll be back. (Coming up next – probably – all about the most interesting rehearsal process I have ever experienced, and some shameless personal promotion for the play I’m acting in…)

Filed by Bil at 1:41 pm under Religion, Gay Agenda, GOP, Damn Hippies, Politics, Fightin' Words, Homophobia
1 Comment

Tonight is the night of Easter Vigil.
The Holiest Night of the Year.
While Christmas may get the most attention and inspire warm fuzzies and gift-giving frenzies all over the world, even in people who have no idea what’s actually being commemorated, Easter is actually the biggest deal in the religious world. Everybody has a birthday. Not everybody rises from the dead.

I’ve just been to a three-hour Easter Vigil mass and I feel great!
I feel enlivened.
I feel I have a clean heart.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Chelsea at 11:21 pm under Religion, Social Issues, Catholicism
1 Comment

Tuesday, 5 February 2008, was Mardi Gras.
You know, the holiday where a million tourists descend upon New Orleans to drink themselves into oblivion and commit random acts of nudity for the price of crappy plastic necklaces? It’s all about decadence and exposure and making a fool out of yourself before the church-imposed wasteland of Lent, right?

Well, kind of. Not really.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Chelsea at 11:05 am under Religion, The South
2 Comments

See if you can figure out what it is.

A Joy Filled and Kingdomized New Year

This is a reading of a spam message that somehow found its way to the tech support queue where I work. I can’t even tell you how much joy it brought to my day, though perhaps not in the way that the author intended. I thought I needed to share it.

Filed by Bil at 11:28 pm under Shameless Plugs, Religion
3 Comments

We’ll start with the shoes.

I don’t really have that much to say about my shoes, other than it had been over a year since I had my own (functioning) pair of Converse All-Stars, but thanks to a Christmas miracle, I am once again strapped in canvas and rubber, burning down highways and ready to kick ass at a moment’s notice. Life is a thousand times better. These shoes will make 2008 SO much better. This pair especially, the first after a dark age in my life, will not only get me around, they will serve as a symbol that my spirit is running strong. When there is a roadblock, they will make a brief squeak on the floor and we’ll all just pick right up again, fast as before. In fact, these shoes will probably help me fly. Literally.

And speaking of Christmas miracles, several orphans in Chicago had a VERY merry Christmas this year thanks to my place of work and a little bit of war – penny wars, to be exact. Much of the credit of the success goes to my team, I might add.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Bil at 9:53 pm under Fightin' Words, Love, Humanism
1 Comment

“Sure, I know I sound like a reincarnation of a flower child, but really, do we have to be so crass during the Christmas season?” — Roland Martin

I’ve kept silent up until now regarding the apparent controversy of preferring “Happy Holidays” to wishing “Merry Christmas” to the odd passerby, choosing instead to grab a front-row seat to Bill O’Reilly’s yearly frothing about the “War on Christmas” and other such nonsense. Frankly, I find the phrase useful since I encounter many people from varied religious backgrounds on a daily basis, as we all do. For example, if I know someone is an observant pagan, Jew, Muslim, or Christian, I will tailor my greeting accordingly, but one can hardly feign such intimate knowledge of the random strangers we encounter; “Happy Holidays” both conveys the spirit of “Merry Christmas” while acknowledging the existence (and validity) of a great many other religious holidays occurring around the same time. Thus, I find that those who take issue with this greeting are themselves going out of their way to be offended — not the opposite.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Trevor at 6:24 am under Religion, Atheism, UU, Social Issues, Pop Culture, Fightin' Words
No Comments

Snowfall –
Blanket of silence and cold descending
On the world, destroying, preserving,
Beautiful and terrible.

In the darkness and drought
Of life and love that is Winter
We search for a flicker
Of Why in each other
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Stephen at 8:06 am under Religion, The Arts, Humanism
No Comments

“Charity and personal force are the only investments worth anything.”
– Walt Whitman

The first year I was in Chicago, my heart broke at the homelessness everywhere. In my hometown in Ohio, there were no homeless people. At all. And in the “big city,” which was Akron, you’d see one or two homeless people a week. It just wasn’t heard of, and when you did see them, you were safely in your car so you didn’t have to make the hard choice to lie to them and say you don’t really have any spare change in your pocket.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Stephen at 10:56 pm under Religion, Activism
No Comments

The Absolute works with nothing.
The workshop, the materials
are what does not exist.
Be a spot on the ground where nothing is growing,
where something might be planted,
a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.
– Rumi

Since my becoming unchurched, I have had some time to think about what speaks to me spiritually. And I’ve come to no conclusions whatsoever. What I have learned, however, is what I don’t like.

One of them is bad sermons.

Sadly, if you’re a Unitarian Universalist, unless you’re attending a church that has hired an amazing minister that always knows just what to say to draw people in, or keep people around, or whatever that congregation wants to do at the time, you’re pretty well guaranteed to get bad sermons at least half the time. And that’s if you’re lucky.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Stephen at 6:53 pm under General, Religion, UU, The Arts, Fightin' Words
9 Comments

It’s not like I’ve been slacking. Really. I have not had a day off in WEEKS. And between the fact that I’m never home and the fact that when I am, I’m in the midst of a very moody, angry depression brought on by grief, I’ve not been much in the mood to write about anything. My cats have even noticed. They are cuddling more with me than usual. But maybe that’s just the fact that it’s getting cold.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Devon at 12:03 pm under Atheism, Damn Hippies, Love
3 Comments