Friday, February 10, 2006
(Saturday) School's Out Forever / The Chosen
As a young child, my parents dutifully dropped me off at Saturday School each week for an injection of "the faith" as it were. We drew pictures of Adam and Eve, constructed succoths out of strawberry baskets, and learned a bit of Hebrew. My Hebrew today is limited to the prayer over the Chanukah...
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Wednesday, February 8, 2006
God's Revenge
With the recent rash of Baptist Church burnings, I couldn't help but think about the time my sister nearly converted to the Baptist faith. As part of her "coming in" a preacher made a home visit to answer any questions my parents or I would have. My sister was 13 at the time and had made friends...
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Tuesday, February 7, 2006
Otherwise Occupied
The Roxy was on fire that night--lights flashing and the bass pumping energy into everyone. Some kind of a drag queen costume contest was in progress. My roommate and I had walked nearly the whole way there from our small pad in the East Village. Really, it was Alphabet City (the end of the...
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Creationist?
Getting out of the car, one could see the vast dryness and desolation of the landscape near the Four Corners. The land is seemingly flat, uninterrupted desert with a sprig of green here and there to remind one that this, too, is the Earth and not some distant planet. All at once, a split in the...
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Monday, February 6, 2006
Whose God is it, Anyway?
We had traveled the spiritual road in the City of New York via the subway system, searching for aids to understand the religious beliefs of people in civilizations which developed long before ours. First stop, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Egyptian Wing where Akhenaton's new art and new god...
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Sunday, February 5, 2006
Getting Lucky?
It was after moving to Texas that I realized that not being Christian in a largely Christian world really mattered. I was the cliché teenage girl, just as geeky in reality as in my own memory. Sadly, this meant that all of the great pop songs playing in my dreams were never to be. I’d have to sit...
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My Lady of the Lake
Very few people recognize their own personal angel, savior, miracle. I count myself among those lucky enough to know the moment when she appeared and to appreciate her tan skin, dark eyes and long brown hair (and her yellow bathing suit) when her image appears in my mind, 36 years after the event of...
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Colorado and the Catholic Church
Upon traveling to the mountain state of Colorado for my niece's baptism (she's Catholic), I discovered that some people in Colorado have interesting ideas about New Yorkers. During the course of the mass before the ceremony, the priest managed to assault Jews, African-Americans and New Yorkers in...
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Faith, Fear and Forgiveness...and the lack thereof
From a young age, I was taught the meaning of the word “agnostic” so that I might explain my family’s religious views to any who would dare to pry. Growing up in a community of Christians and Jews, yet exposed to Buddhists, Hindus and atheists, I knew from the start that my upbringing was vastly...
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