is that it validates the very human impulse to think that we can "make up" for things - rewrite the past, undo what we have done, magic away the reality with something else - that we can fix our misdeeds and harms done by harming ourselves in some way.

And we can't. We really can't.

It's not that religions create this idea: as I stated above, it' ( Read more... )

It is something of a blog tradition with me to post on this anniversary one of the two things we actually have of St. Patrick that aren't accretions, aren't legends merely - the Letter to the soldiers of Coroticus, a British Christian king or warleader of fifteen-hundred-plus years back who didn't let that stuff in the Gospels about living and ( Read more... )

(after Frank R. Stockton)


( Read more... )